Latino vote a key factor in 2021 Republican surge

Republican Glenn Youngkin’s recent upset over ex-Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state President Biden won by 10 points just last year, marked a significant Republican comeback that is now raising questions about the upcoming 2022 national mid-term elections.

The conservative shift, which turned the Commonwealth red for the first time since Gov. Bob McDonnell left office in 2014, included a new lieutenant governor, attorney general and flipping several state seats in the House of Delegates, returning the state’s lower house legislative chamber back to Republican control. 

Tuesday’s election has been widely recognized, even by some Democrats, as a referendum on the Biden administration’s competency and far-left policy agenda, sending shockwaves across the party as it prepares for next year’s midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress and other statehouses nationwide. 

Many political analysts note that the Republican victory in Virginia is only the surface of a deeper story about how Governor-elect Youngkin beat the odds in the race to Richmond’s Executive Mansion.  

According to a recent AP VoteCast survey, Youngkin’s victory was largely built by small gains in key groups, the most surprising of which was Latinos who comprise 5.5 percent of the state’s eligible voters. 

Henry Olsen, an elections analyst and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told USA Today, “Youngkin cut into Democratic margins among Asians and Latinos and some suburban whites while getting Trump-level support among rural Virginians. That combination was enough for victory.” 

Exit polling by CNN and NBC on election night suggested McAuliffe was leading Youngkin by 34 points among Latino voters, but a VoteCast survey reported by both the AP and The Wall Street Journal alternatively suggested Latinos favored the Republican candidate by more than 10 points. 

In fact, history was made that night with the election of the state’s first Latino attorney general, Jason Miyares, who back in 2015 was the first Cuban-American elected to the Virginia General Assembly. He is the first Hispanic to win a statewide election in the Commonwealth.

Throughout the past two decades, statistics have shown Latinos emerging as one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the U.S., as both parties have scrambled to court potential voters. 

Before Biden’s 2020 run, Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were all able to capture a Latino majority in their quests for the presidency. 

However, that landscape appears to be undergoing a tectonic shift. 

“In Virginia, Trump ran 6 points ahead of his 2016 performance with Latinos — from 30 percent to 36 percent, according to 2020 exit polls. Meanwhile, Biden only won 61 percent of the Latino vote, down from Clinton’s 65 percent in 2016,” POLITICO recently reported. 

Some Latino-heavy districts in New Jersey’s election also suggested a Republican shift compared to the 2017 gubernatorial contest, and just last year, Biden suffered a 23-point loss in Florida’s Latino dominated Miami-Dade County, a significant disparity from Hillary Clinton’s 30-point advantage in 2016. 

And although Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom prevailed in the Sept. 14 recall election, some of the party’s strategists warn the liberal vanguard state is losing its influence in the Latino community. 

“Donald Trump got a historic number of Latino votes in 2020, and you can claim it was because of this or because of that, but it’s not like Larry Elder broke through for these folks. There is something else going on,” Los Angeles Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo told NBC in September. 

On Nov. 5, the New York Times editorial board acknowledged that the Democratic Party’s far-left tilt was damaging its chances of reelection, and offered it some friendly advice: 

“Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people. Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office…Time to focus on — and pass — policies with broad support. Or risk getting run out of office.”

Some analysts believe the recent shift is not just an anomaly, and that there is significant room for Latinos to empower the GOP corner of the ring. 

“Youngkin is the right choice for Latinos in Virginia because he is committed to breaking down barriers to affordable health care, educational options and economic opportunities, so all families in Virginia can thrive,” said Libre Initiative President Daniel Garza, a Virginia based Hispanic grassroots organization. 

Gabriela DeMola, an Ecuadorian-born voter from Northern Virginia, echoed that sentiment to ADN America saying she voted for Youngkin because of his educational and economic promises, while also signaling that many Latinos are sensitive to far-left policies because they trigger sensitivities that remind many immigrants of the regimes they fled. 

“Under Democratic representation, we have seen a huge, dramatic shift in how kids are taught in the classrooms,” DeMola said. “Instead of a responsive classroom, kids have been fed very biased propaganda that has only limited their self-esteem and advancement.”

DeMola’s sentiments echo the one-third of Virginians who cited the economy as the most important issue facing the Commonwealth. 

“We are hard workers. We don’t need a handout, just an equal playing field. In my circles of Hispanics, we are all Republicans. We fought hard to escape exactly the government-controlled system that threatens our society today,” she added. 

Libre Initiative Coalitions Director Michael Monrroy believes that if politicians focus on “kitchen-table” issues such as economic opportunity and education, the Latino community could become an important constituency. 

“I think perhaps Washington has focused too heavily on left-leaning policy priorities and need to come back to the center, focusing on the kitchen-table issues that can really transform the lives of Latino families,” Monrroy told ADN America. “These families have been hurting during the pandemic and want economic relief along with a better future for their children.” 

If passed, Youngkin’s "Day One Game Plan" could do just that by doubling Virginia’s standard income tax deduction, eliminating the commonwealth’s 2.5 percent grocery tax, suspending a recent gas tax increase and even providing a temporary tax holiday to small business owners. 

“As long as the Latino community holds Governor Youngkin and all of the candidates that were elected on Tuesday accountable – and are given a seat at the table – I think they will be very competitive moving forward,” Monrroy continued. 

On election night, Youngkin vowed to live up to his promises of creating more opportunity and limiting government interference. 

“This is the spirit of Virginia coming together like never before,” the governor-elect told supporters on election night. “For too long, we've been expected to shelve our dreams, to shelve our hope, to settle for low expectations. We will not be a commonwealth of low expectations. We'll be a commonwealth of high expectations.”