TEXAS, USA — Politicians and anybody helping them get elected have wised up in recent years and instead of approaching Hispanic voters as a monolithic voting bloc, they have modernized their approach.
This is true of both Democrats and Republicans because the stakes are enormous. Whichever party can win the demographic likely dominates politics in the coming years.
“There’s going to be a huge swath of voters to go out and get, and we're going to see which party picks up the fastest, because it's going to determine the political direction of the country in states like Texas and California and Arizona and Nevada, Georgia, you know, Pennsylvania now, North Carolina, a whole slew of states, now, going forward,” Mike Madrid said on the most recent episode of Y’all-itics.
Mike Madrid would, and should, know.
The GOP strategist has not only worked for several U.S. Presidents, he’s also the founder of the influential Lincoln Project. He says Latinos are becoming much more politically engaged in the United States for several reasons, including the fact their voters are younger, on average, and their overall population is growing fast.
“Latinos in presidential election cycles will be setting records for turn out from now through the end of our lives. Why? Because the population is growing so fast it's just a mathematical inevitability,” said Madrid.
And that also means the group’s political influence is growing just as fast. So Madrid wonders what it means for the midterms in November. Hispanic voters, he says, have generally turned out in higher numbers for general elections. But he says the one exception was the midterm during the 2018 election cycle, our last midterm before this November’s.
In an attempt to repeat that midterm turnout, political teams are no longer taking a one-size-fits-all approach to try to win over the Hispanic vote. Madrid says political investments in the Hispanic community must now be multi-layered, trying to reach more people and, most importantly, he says the outreach must start earlier.
“What we're arguing is that there needs to be greater investments in the community earlier on if you're going to see that turn out manufactured,” he said. “It’s like manufacturing runs in baseball, right? You get on with a single. You steal second. You bunt them over to third. And then, you know, you try to drive him home with the right conditions to start putting points on the board.”
Madrid is not alone in his quest to understand the Latino Vote, which just so happens to be the title of a new podcast he hosts with Chuck Rocha, the senior strategist of the Bernie Sanders campaign and one of the country’s most seasoned political consultants.
They, along with former Texas state Representative Jason Villalba, explore the voting patterns and political leanings of Hispanic voters.
Rocha says Democrats should approach Hispanics the same way the party has tried to win over white, suburban women, a demographic the party’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars on over the years.
“Smartly, we ran a lot of TV targeted to them. A lot of digital ads. Sent them lots of mail. Called them on the phone. Knocked on their door. Because guess what? If you spend a whole bunch of money talking to a whole bunch of people over a long period of time, you can move numbers. That's just a fact of politics,” Rocha said.
And Rocha, too, speaks to the importance of a multi-layered approach instead of simply taking the group for granted.
“The problem has been with Latinos, is a) you had a bunch of white folks who didn't understand the community, so it was an afterthought. You had ads that weren't culturally competent, and we can get into that later, but you know, that were Google translated,” the consultant said. “But if you will do a multi layered approach, because Latinos older and younger, just like older and younger white people, are consuming things differently. So use a multi layered approach.”
Be sure to listen to this latest episode of Y’all-itics for more on the new “southern strategies” being used in political campaigns in states such as Texas, Georgia and Arizona; which political party has the advantage in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley; and whether Latino support for Donald Trump was a one-off or an indicative of changing trends. Cheers!
The Latino Vote podcast: The Latino Vote (buzzsprout.com)
Lincoln Project: The Lincoln Project: Home