From Harry Enten for CNN:
The Democratic Party’s early 2000s dream of an emerging majority based on a diversifying electorate has run into reality. Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, and they barely won in 2020. Part of their problem was declining support among White voters.
But the 2020 election also pointed to another problem: Hispanic voters (who are growing as a portion of the electorate) moving toward the Republican Party. Recent polling – and now this week’s Texas primaries – show that these Republican gains don’t seem to be going away anytime soon….
All told, 27% of the Texans who voted Tuesday in the 16 most Hispanic counties cast a ballot in the Republican primary. This may not seem like a lot but consider that in 2018, just 15% of those who voted in either the Democratic or Republican primary cast a ballot on the Republican side.
In Starr County, 24% of primary votes were cast on the Republican side Tuesday. It was basically nothing in 2018, with a mere 0.2% of primary votes being cast on the Republican side. That’s a 24-point shift.
Compare this with what happened statewide in Texas this year. There was slight movement toward Republicans: Of the votes cast on the Democratic or Republican side, 65% were Republican primary votes. In 2018, it was 60%. This was a 4-point shift without rounding.
Put another way, the shift in Republican primary participation in those 16 heavily Hispanic counties was nearly three times the statewide shift….
Democrats have held a 23-point advantage among Hispanics on the generic congressional ballot in the average of these polls so far this year.
An average of three estimates of how Americans voted in House races in 2020 (Catalist, the CNN exit poll and the Pew Research Center) found that Democrats won the House vote by about 28 points in 2020 among Hispanics.
This 5-point shift toward Republicans among Hispanics is in line with the 5-point shift we see among voters overall – Republicans ahead by 2 points on the generic congressional ballot, compared with losing the national House vote by 3 points in 2020.
The key thing to realize, though, is that Democrats did worse – and Republicans did better – among Hispanic voters in 2020 House races relative to the national vote than in any House election since 2004. So while not losing additional ground is not a bad thing for Democrats, it’s not a good thing either.