According to CNN exit polling, New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) won the support of 68% of Latino voters, while Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) received 67% support from Latino voters.
The results mark a shift from just one year ago, when the voting bloc helped propel Trump to victory. Republicans say the time is now to course-correct ahead of next year’s midterms.
“Unfortunately Latinos are leaving the Republican Party after giving us a monumental chance in 2024,” said Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) in an video posted on the social platform X after Tuesday’s results. “In New Jersey and Virginia, Hispanics moved back more than 25 points to the Democratic Party.”
Not Protestant Evangelicals, which GOP is the party of. The conservative traditions the GOP back aren’t Catholic traditions. American Evangelicalism has spread to Latin America like a plague though along with MAGA conspiracy bullshit.
How common is that for Latino immigrants?
Or they came to escape rampant violence, political persecution & repression from regimes dissolving unstable governments, economic hardship. Some were escaping terrorism from political extremists or uncontrolled cartel & gang violence compounded by government corruption.
Latinos aren’t new to regimes seizing power & destabilizing governments into corruption: it’s a common theme throughout their history. When they aren’t fucking themselves over, it’s invariably been Gringos fucking them over with banana republics, invasions, unpopular CIA-backed regime changes, ill-conceived US drug policies that fuel violence, deporting violent gangs from US prisons to run amok in their countries. Latinos are aware of the role Gringo interventionism has had in much of their turmoil.
Especially in the case of Chavez & Maduro, I think they mistakenly identified government corruption with a particular side of the political spectrum instead of with the tactic of populist demagoguery that dismantles law & consolidates authoritarian control. They’d uncritically swallow GOP claims that Democrats are aspiring communists. Albeit, GOP actively engaged Latinos while Democrats mostly took minority votes for granted.
That may be part of it, but I think it’s more an aversion to left-wing authoritarianism for Latinos that escaped those sort of regimes & their failure to recognize the extremists in the US are on the right & racist AF.