This week’s monumental Red Wave election may lay bare a trend that has been gaining strength for the past six years. One of the main voting groups that have been pandered to by Democrats for decades may be rising up to wield their electoral might.
And not in the way the President and his party intended.
While liberals have spent much of the past couple of years trying to divide and separate along new lines, based on gender, vaccines, masks and social media platforms, one of their previous groups of interest – Hispanic Americans – appears poised to vote against Democrats at the greatest levels in recent history.
Phil Wegmann of RealClearPolitics joined Fox News Host, Neil Cavuto, late last week to discuss this trend, as we approach Election Day in America.
“We’ve talked and discussed quite a bit, the movement of the Latino vote, not that it’s monolithic, never was. But that it is going more and more the GOP way, the Republican way,” Cavuto began. “I imagine in no small part that’s an economic issue, not even a border issue. But is it worrying Democrats that this safe voting group – or at least super-safe a little more than a decade ago – has election by election got less and less for Democrats? And now, maybe in the first election, a majority for Republicans?”
“I know that Democrats have their hands full worrying about a number of other issues. I’m not sure they’re focusing on this particular political headache in the here and now,” Wegmann said. “But if you look at the last couple of election cycles, certainly they are paying attention. If you look at 2020 or 2016, Donald Trump made inroads with a number of Hispanic communities in border congressional districts.”
According to respectable polling outfits, such as Richard Baris’ Big Data Poll, that trend may be continuing during this midpoint of the Trump era. Baris has consistently reported on his People’s Pundit Daily program in recent weeks that Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, may be on track to win the majority of the Hispanic vote in her race against Democrat Katie Hobbs. A remarkable feat for a Republican. And this trend of support is being seen in other races across tightly-contested battleground states, albeit not with the same intensity as with Lake.
“That argument from Obama pollsters circa 2012 about the coalition of the ascendants, that has sort of fallen apart, as you see Republicans increasingly making arguments specifically to Hispanic and Latino communities that they are the best on the economic issus,” Wegmann noted. “And if we see the GOP clean up in some of these races that I just mentioned, you know, Blake Masters, or those Texas congressional districts, well then, at that point, Democrats will have to take notice and I think that they will go back to the drawing board instead of just relying on some of these constituencies.”
In a Friday opinion piece on FoxNews.com, Alfredo Ortiz, President and CEO of the Job Creators Network, reminded readers that “President Donald Trump cut Democrats’ outperformance among Hispanics from 42 points in 2016 to 26 points in 2020.” He went on to quote a recent Pew Research survey that shows that 77% of Hispanics are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, while 54% disapprove of President Joe Biden’s job performance.
These numbers are horrific for a sitting President and his party, who are likely to lose control of both houses of Congress this week. And especially horrific coming from a group they’ve counted on – needed, actually – to cobble together a winning coalition.
Ortiz writes, “This shift in Hispanic political support shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Hispanics have been among the biggest losers of the Biden economy. They are disproportionately impacted by ongoing historic inflation and record gas prices that are a direct consequence of Democrats’ reckless spending and energy prohibitions.”
Ortiz points out that Hispanics’ real median income rose by 7.1% in 2019 versus 5.7% for whites. He says their wages grew 24% faster than during President Barack Obama’s second term. In essence, he believes they are pining for the good economic times created just a few short years ago by Trump and Republicans. Good times that were created by implementing policies to help the wide swath of citizens, regardless of their origin.
For decades, Democrats have sold Hispanic Americans a plan that included more illegal immigration, open borders and socialistic handouts. As it turns out, they want exactly the same thing most Americans of any heritage want – affordable food and gas, safe neighborhoods and increased economic opportunity.
And it appears they are increasingly choosing the Republican party as the one that can best help them achieve those aspirations.
Rick Schultz is a former Sports Director for WFUV Radio at Fordham University. He has coached and mentored hundreds of Sports Broadcasting students at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, Marist College and privately. His media career experiences include working for the Hudson Valley Renegades, Army Sports at West Point, The Norwich Navigators, 1340/1390 ESPN Radio in Poughkeepsie, NY, Time Warner Cable TV, Scorephone NY, Metro Networks, NBC Sports, ABC Sports, Cumulus Media, Pamal Broadcasting and WATR. He has also authored a number of books including “A Renegade Championship Summer” and “Untold Tales From The Bush Leagues”. To get in touch, find him on Twitter @RickSchultzNY.
