Over 5 million Latino Americans joined the ranks of US eligible voters since the 2022 midterm elections. Experts say these voters are the real swing group because many are not wedded to either party. "Latinos are the only true swing voters in America," said strategist Mike Madrid about their influence.
The writer is a contributing columnist
Over 5mn Latino Americans have joined the ranks of US eligible voters since the last midterm elections in 2022 -- more than half the total gain in that period. Latino eligible voters are now the second-largest group in the US, after white voters.
But political experts say they punch well beyond their weight not just because of numbers, but because many Latino voters are in the "moveable middle": not wedded to either political party. That could make them unusually influential in next month's midterm elections.
"Latinos are the only true swing voters in America," veteran Republican political strategist Mike Madrid, co-host of The Latino Vote podcast, tells me. Latino voters helped Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, with their vote nearly split between the two parties at 48 per cent for Republican Trump and 51 per cent for Democrat Kamala Harris. That was a massive shift from the 38 percentage point lead that Democrats commanded among Latino voters as recently as 2016.
But the shift was far from permanent, Madrid says: many Latinos are now telling pollsters they won't vote Republican again this year. Among those who voted for Trump in 2024, a third now say they are disappointed or regret their vote, according to the Latino-focused polling firm Equis Research. The disaffection was even voiced by a prominent Latina Republican, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar of Florida. "The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today," she said, in a widely publicised TV ad campaign.
Altogether, 38 per cent of the Latino electorate is either undecided, independent or has crossed party lines in 2024, according to UnidosUS, the Latino advocacy group. More than two-thirds think the US is headed in the wrong direction, it says, adding that the "moveable middle" of these voters is "big enough to decide who controls Congress".
But Madrid thinks Latinos are not swing voters in the traditional sense of the word: "2024 was not a shift to Republicans, it was a shift away from Democrats. And right now, the same thing is happening, but in reverse: Latinos are rejecting the Republican Party the same way they rejected the Democratic Party . . . there is nothing ideological about it."
"Latino voters are pragmatic," Ricardo Rauseo Landa of the Latino voter advocacy group Somos Votantes told me. His group's polling shows that, especially in the Midwest, these voters are "very much focused on the economy and making ends meet". Immigration, he says, doesn't really come up in conversations.
In the Latino neighbourhoods of Milwaukee, in the critical Midwest swing state of Wisconsin, the barber shops and bakeries were packed on a recent Saturday. At Rivera's Western Wear, the pungent scent of real leather greets me as soon as I open the door: shelves stacked with boots, belts and buckles reach to the ceiling as proprietor Alejandro Rivera pauses to talk politics. He is a staunch Democrat but he says that wouldn't stop him voting for a Republican "if he is aligned with the interests of the community". And if not? "I wouldn't vote for him, whether he was a Republican or a Democrat".
Nelson Soler, who describes himself as an independent voter, is president and CEO of the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Southeastern Wisconsin. He tells me that most of his members vote by candidate, not party. "Latinos have been underserved by both parties," he says, adding, "I see more Latinos going from partisan to independent lately."
Madrid says this is the way elections are supposed to work: the system was designed so that if people aren't serving your interests, you punish them by voting them out. Instead, he thinks the US is beset by what he calls "paper partisanship" in which voters will not leave their party "no matter how bad it gets economically". Latinos are the only Americans today who are "voting rationally in an irrational, broken system", he argues.
If he's right, then hold on to your hats: the Latino vote won't be sitting still any time soon.