Polls show GOP Latino spike in recent weeks as mainstream media sounds alarm

The Republican Party is on a roll—with Blacks and Latinos. The two groups, which have traditionally given the Democratic Party a strong power base are continuously defecting to the GOP and the numbers have increased since this summer, according to recent polls conducted among 1,500 people by the Wall Street Journal from Oct. 22 to 26.

Democrats previous 11-point lead in August over Republicans among Latinos has shrunk to only five percentage points, giving Republicans a strong six point edge over their liberal opponents.

The shift among Black voters is even stronger, but over a much longer range of time.

According to WSJ polls in both August and October, approximately 17% of Black voters committed to voting for a Republican congressional candidate over a Democrat. That number is a 9% spike from the number who voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and also 8% who supported Republicans in 2018 congressional elections, according to AP VoteCast.

The WSJ polling shows a rapid Latino red wave that is only gaining momentum as America inches closer and closer to Tuesday’s Nov. 8 midterm election day, and a study defection of Blacks who have continued shifting over to the GOP.

The numbers also suggest voter focus on issues such as the economy and inflation, two key issues Republicans are aiming at in the 2022 midterm elections. The Journal also said that the shift was a dramatic turn from 2020 when Latinos favored then candidate Joe Biden of President Donald Trump by 28 percentage points, and House Democrats by a whopping 31 points, according to VoteCast.

“I think that this could be a paradigm-shift election, where Republicans are not only making inroads with the Latino vote, but they’re now making inroads with the African-American vote,” said John Anzalone, one of the analysts who performed the WSJ survey and served as Biden’s lead pollster in 2020.

Another WSJ polling analyst, Republican Tony Fabrizio who served as Trump’s lead pollster in 2020 said,

“It is wholly possible that Republicans reach a new high water mark among both African-Americans and Hispanic voters in this election.”

Another Republican pollster, Wes Anderson who has conducted surveys for Republican gubernatorial and Senate campaigns called the evolution “a demographic sea change” and said his own polling of likely Latino voters shows them drifting toward Republican candidates. According to the WSJ, pollsters in both parties are struggling to determine if the change represents an everlasting or long term shift or if its linked to recent fears about the economy or energized campaigning being pushed by Trump.

For the past couple of years Republicans, Democratic operatives and liberal pundits have publicly critized the Democratic Party’s recent failures in courting both Blacks and Latinos. Republicans have mobilized special groups in battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada for gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Senate candidate Adam Laxalt while some Democrats are complaining that they’ve reached out to prospective voters and found that no one knocked on their door or even called them throughout the election season.

Lake has created the Official Latinos for Lake Coalition, which is promoted on Twitter and Laxalt has created the Laxalt for Latinoswebsite, giving Hispanic Americans a special channel to join his campaign.

In an Oct. 13 Arizona Republic column titled, “Hear that? It’s the momentum sliding away from Katie Hobbs to Kari Lake, Phil Boas wrote that, “after a disastrous Latino forum and national press for her opponent, Katie Hobbs might now need that governor’s debate now more than Kari Lake.”

Other mainstream media publications have acknowledged the battle for Latinos in the two southwest desert states.

“Both candidates are making an aggressive play to Latinos, a voting group that is key to victory in Nevada and looks up for grabs in ways it hasn’t been in decades,” writes Molly Ball for TIME Magazine in an Oct. 24 piece that examines the phenomenon.

The WSJ poll, which summarized a large group of Latino voters determined that some positions changed based on education levels.

For instance, Hispanic American voters with an undergraduate university degree favored Democratic candidates over Republicans by nearly double, 61% to 32% whereas Republicans were favored by those Latinos with less accredited education.

The Journal said that the educational distinctions are evidence that the 2016 blue collar revolution that occurred among Whites has spread to other working class groups such as Blacks and Latinos.

“Black working-class and Hispanic working-class people have a lot more in common with white working-class people than many people have been willing to believe,” said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute who writes often on the subject in an interview with the Journal.