Episode 009 – How did Latinos Vote in the 2020 Election?

[0:00:02 Speaker 0] mhm, you’re listening. Toe Latin Experts A podcast of Latino studies at the University of Texas at Austin Latin experts features the voices of faculty, staff and students, as well as friends and alumni of the Department of Mexican American and Latino Latino Studies, the Latino Research Institute and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Join us for this episode of Latin experts. Hi, everyone. I am Daniel Cleland, and I am an associate professor here at Malls at U T. And I am hosting our podcast Latin experts today. This is our post election podcast. And so we’re excited to bring you some expertise about the election and just a conversation about the Latino vote in general and where we are, Um, politically. And so I’m happy toe have with me. Victoria DeFrancesco, Soto Here she is assistant dean for civic engagement and a lecture at the LBJ School of Public Affairs here at UT, where she was selected as one of you tease game changers. She’s also a faculty affiliate of Malls and the Center for Mexican American Studies. She received her PhD in political science from Duke University, which is actually how we know each other because I was a Chapel Hill while she was at Duke, and so we saw Ah lot of each other in Durham. And she’s a contributor to MSNBC and NBC news dot com, as well as a regular political analyst for Telemundo. She has provided on air analysis for CNN, Fox, PBS, Univision, NPR and has appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. So I’m really excited to talk to you about the election. When I agreed to do this podcast prior to November, I was nervous that we might have to have a depressing interview about a Trump win and our waning democracy. Thankfully, we may only have one of those things happening. Um, but certainly, you know, we’ll talk about how this election is put, you know, our institutions to the test. And I think we’ll continue to do so, um, until inauguration until January 20th. Um, but anyway, I’m really glad to have you here to talk about President elect Biden. How that happened on the role of Latino voters. So welcome,

[0:02:30 Speaker 1] Grasses. Daniel, I’m so excited to be part of this podcast and to reconnect with you, uh, and quickly welcome to u T. I’m so excited to have you in post pandemic. I can’t wait to see you

[0:02:43 Speaker 0] in person. Yes, we’re actually remote right now, So, yeah, we’ll be happy to see your face is well, so let’s, um Well, let’s talk. I mean, you know, there have been, ah lot of discussions in the media, I think, among academics and social media about Latinos and their role, Uh, in this election, eso You know, I want to kind of start there and just think about, you know, some of the winds that biden, um, you know, received in certain states thanks to the Latino vote.

[0:03:17 Speaker 1] Okay, So, Danielle, you and I know is Wells our listeners that the Latino vote is very diverse. It’s diverse in terms of country of origin, right? So we have different political patterns behavioral patterns, depending on whether you’re Cuban American in Puerto Rico and Mexico, Nicaragua Wednesday we also have some pretty stark intergenerational differences. We also have some pretty marked state based differences. So Texas Latinos, you know, voting differently than California Latinos, the Nevada Latinos, and then even within states. You see differences. So there is so much to unpack when we’re talking about the Latino vote. And I think it’s really important that the media kind of the general public understands those nuances rather than going into new jerk assumptions about Oh, you know, Latinos really supported Trump this time around or oh, um, you know Latinos in Texas, you know what’s up with them? It’s It’s a very nuanced picture that we need to paint. And I think, you know, for the purposes of this conversation I would love to dig into, You know, what really happened in Florida and what really happened in Texas. So, yes, you know, President Trump did over perform with some segments of the Latino population in some segments of these respective states. But when you stand back, you see that vice president slash president elect Joe Biden won across the board nationally and in Florida and in Texas. The Latino vote Florida to stand out as the state where he won the fewest Latino votes. But he still won the Latino vote, and I’ll start with Florida and you know we can kick, you know, kick around the other states and the really interesting facets of the Arizona’s and the and the Wisconsin’s and the Michigan’s. But in Florida. Uh, you know, first, I want to put things into perspective. Miami Dade County has been in the news That was one of the counties that had the quickest returns. And we saw that that, you know, President Trump dominated there. Well, for those of us who follow Latino politics, that wasn’t a huge surprise. You know, first of all, when we’re looking at Cubans in South Florida, we already know that there is, Ah, base of GOP support. It’s been there since you know, the Bay of Pigs failure from the Democratic Kennedy administration. So that z it is what it is. And then you layer on top. Uh, you know, the label that Trump grabbed onto of socialism And this is based on Bernie Sanders being a Democratic Socialist and some of the comments he made. So that was hung around Joe Biden, even though Joe Biden is a very centrist Democrat. But Joe Biden was never able to shake that. The third point on understanding Florida is that the Trump campaign put in the work, you know, let’s give credit where credit is dio the Trump campaign hired a political operative actually very skilled and knowledgeable Cuban political operative to run the outreach in Miami Dade, Going back to June of 2019, the Biden campaign really didn’t go in, you know, with, you know, kind of purposely go in on Latino targeted outreach into Florida until late summer, 2020. So the Trump campaign had more than a more than a year’s lead. They were putting in the work. And then let’s layer on top of that, the direct outreach so direct outreach is important. We know both in consumer marketing and political marketing that face to face approach is really effective, especially with our with our Latino community. But because of the pandemic and in the public health concerns, the Democrats really didn’t go there. They did a lot more virtual, lot more phone banking. Where’s the Republicans? And I know for a fact. You know, I I know folks on the ground that they were door knocking and that matters. They were going in, they were having capacity toes, they were going in the living rooms and the Democrats were in the last point. I’ll make about Florida, which generalizes to Texas, and quite frankly, the rest of the nation is that in 2018 Republicans got a wake up call. They’re like, Oh, crap, we glossed bad. We need to do something. So you saw Republicans go on a very, very effective offense. They poured money into it. So you put all of these factors together and you start to see why Trump did so well in Miami Dade. But, you know, before ending, are kind of Florida. Take. Also, remember that the Miami Dade is only 3.1% of the Latino population. So, yes, it gets a lot of attention because Florida gets a lot of attention. It’s Florida. It’s big, it’s swinging. It’s kind of crazy. But put things into perspective. Um, it, you know, it kind of performed like we would expect it to perform giving all these things, but it’s only one part of understanding the Latino narrative.

[0:08:47 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think definitely, you know, because of the Electoral College, we’re putting all of this emphasis on Florida. Um, but I you know, I mean, so I was in Miami for eight years, you know, I’m coming here from FBI. You. And so you know, what I think is interesting about this is that you know, because Trump won Florida. We’re talking about Cubans, Andi. Other Latino groups that voted for him primarily. You know, Venezuelans. Um, had Biden won the state, we’d probably be talking about Cubans that did support him and this changing South Florida electorate. So I think you know, you have both things happening you have on the one hand, you know, the Republican Party, you know, really going in there and doing the outreach that you talked about. Um, but at the same time, I think you also have this changing electorate. It’s generational. Um, and you know, a lot of young folks, you know, we’re working with coupons for Biden and did quite a bit of work, you know, both in the Cuban communities of South Florida, but also working with other groups, like Haitians. So I think both trends are happening. You know, democrats have to pay more attention to Florida. Um, but, you know, the Republican Party really went in there and, you know, took advantage of their resource is and turn out because I think this is also about turnout. Um, and

[0:10:02 Speaker 1] then you let let me happen, and we’ve got to give credit where credit is due for the Puerto Rican mobilization up in the I four corridor. So, you know, as a result of Hurricane Maria and kind of the economic distress in Puerto Rico, we’ve seen Hunt. You know, thousands upon thousands of of Puerto Ricans from the island come over into the Orlando area. And so that’s that’s starting to rival the size of the Cuban electorate. And they voted for Joe Biden around 68 to 70%. So that was very important in terms of keeping that Latino vote as a whole in Florida going to Joe Biden. So as we go forward, I think for the Democratic Party, the eye is on the Puerto Rican I four corridor vote as well as those young Cubans. You talk about Daniel and I and I want to give a shout out to someone who wrote a piece on kind of that newer generation of Cubanos. Paula Ramos S O Paulo Ramos. You know, um, journalist, she just wrote a fantastic book on on Latin text populations and she wrote an article a couple of days after the election saying, Okay, yes, there are a bunch of Republican Cubanos, but they’re also Democratic Cubano such as myself. And let’s explain that so I would encourage the listeners to check out power. Ramos is work on that.

[0:11:24 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I remember being, you know, in my classroom, teaching Cuban politics at F I. U and my students, you know, wanted to leave the class early so that they could go to the Gillam rally on campus. Eso you know, I mean, there’s a there’s a lot going on in Florida and so I, um I think that we, you know, still need toe watch and that Democrats, really you need to pay attention to that change that’s happening. Um, the last thing I want to say although I don’t want to fall into

[0:11:49 Speaker 1] the problem is talking about I know. But the last thing I

[0:11:55 Speaker 0] want to say that I think you know is being missed by the media is that, you know, a lot of the scenes that we saw, you know in Miami Dade were of black lives matter, protesters outside, and Cubans across the street from them screaming Trump 2020 on dso. I think that we also have to take into account, you know, black lives matter having a black VP candidate And what that meant for a lot of, you know, the anti blackness that exists in the Cuban community. Um, which I work on a lot, and so I’m you know, I’m kind of more hyper aware of it, but I think that had a big impact in, you know, the way that Cubans were thinking about this election. You know, calling black lives matter, uh, supporters, Marxists, communists. Um, you know, I think there was some anti blackness that also played into this and some fear about, you know, black protests and black mobilization that also brought folks out to the polls to vote for Trump.

[0:12:55 Speaker 1] I’m so glad you bring this up, Daniel. Because in understanding Latino politics, you need to understand Latin American historical context. And, you know, in Latin America, the way we racialized our populations was was different. It was not explicit. Um, but going back to the Spanish colonial legacy, we had the cost. A system eso Latin Americans have always been hyper aware of racial hierarchies, and we bring that with us, right? We may not have had the Jim Crow system per se and, you know, slavery may have, you know, gone away before here in the United States, but we still carry with us that racial cast a system from our our Spanish conquistador legacy that I, I think very much seeps in thio how Latinos negotiate race and negotiate their political ideology. It’s it’s messy. I don’t think is It’s it’s straightforward is when we’re talking about the proud boys. Yeah, but it’s there. And it’s something that we do need to confront.

[0:14:05 Speaker 0] Yeah, 100%. I mean, Cuba was one of the last countries to abolish slavery, and they, um, you know, And when um, Jim Crow was happening here in the US, there was informal Jim Crow in Cuba. And so, you know, that’s I think you’re right, right? That’s something that people don’t necessarily know about. Um, And I think just thinking about, you know, um, racial attitudes throughout the Latino community. And, you know, even outside of Florida is really important. Um, and maybe, you know that maybe that is connected to you know, some of the stories about Texas, um, you know, and, uh, and the South Texas, you know, support for Trump. But But I’ll let you, uh talk a little bit about that, even though I think that we shouldn’t focus on that, Right, Because Latinos came out big in the cities in Texas, you know, for Biden. So, um, you know, perhaps this is ah ah, situation. You know, as AOC suggested, where Latinos are being scapegoated here.

[0:15:00 Speaker 1] Yeah, and again, it’s complicated. There is no one reason why we saw, you know, kind of in in some of those counties in the Rio Grande Valley having a higher support for Trump. And in one case, I think it’s a pasta that voted for Trump. And, you know, I think my first go to in this and understanding, um, Texas politics is understanding candidate brands and Hillary Clinton in 2016 did quite well. But you have to step back and understand that history. Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton had very strong relationship with Latinos in Texas and Latinos in the Valley, going back to the 19 seventies when, when they were here doing grassroots had reached from a gover. So the Clintons had a very special relationship to Texas. So when people go, Oh, my God! By an underperform compared to Clinton, it’s more about Clinton and Biden. You know, they just really didn’t know Biden and then Biden, you know? Yes, he was. He was President Obama’s VP. But folks and taxes really don’t know him. And then because of the pandemic, because we didn’t see that traditional grassroots mobilization that you would see that you’d see Biden coming or Kamala coming. You didn’t get that. And that hurt because that goes back to that issue of the grassroots organizing, um, and the importance of it. And then, you know, for a couple of counties we see that there is a strong linkages we’ve seen from reporting on the ground to the oil and gas industry. And not to say that Biden is going to come in and, you know, kind of do away with it. But the Trump campaign was quite effective. It framing buying. President Elect Biden is doing that. So for some folks, they very much voted with a myopic, you know, pocketbook view of saying Okay, well, you know, I commute over to, you know, kind of some other counties to do fracking and oil and gas and my body most do and and I’m worried about this, and that’s my livelihood so that you know, that’s part of the X inflammation as well. And the other pieces back to that. That diversity of Latinos, not all Latinos or immigration expansionists and some of the folks on the border, especially those that are employed by the Border Patrol Service that are employed in kind of this this, you know, immigration restrictionist complex see their livelihood tied to a more restrictionist vision of immigration. So again, it’s about half a dozen factors. Daniel. It’s not that Latinos love Trump. Yeah, no, it’s complicated.

[0:17:37 Speaker 0] Yeah, And I think you know that the parallels here if we look at you know, Texas, Florida and other places is that, you know, the Trump campaign stoked the fears that that they needed to stoke. And I mean, I think, uh, you know, whether it be communism in Miami or oil and gas in Texas, you know, they were, you know, pretty effective at doing that.

[0:17:57 Speaker 1] And, hey, fear is an effective thing. We we know from political psychology. If there’s one thing that the fear does is a motivates, it makes you more attentive, and this is just a totally one off. But Democrats don’t hit his heart is Republicans Do it. I look, I want you don’t know. I love me some caso cerrado and and my telenovelas and I would cease, um, like hard hitting Negative Trump campaign ads. Ouch. You know, I didn’t see We see many negative campaign ads from the Democratic side, and I know that, you know, there’s a whole polemic of negative campaigning and what that does, but it can’t work. And I and I saw the trump campaign making making headways on that.

[0:18:49 Speaker 0] Yeah, no, we keep going high. But, I mean, I think there are people that are, you know, frustrated with that.

[0:18:55 Speaker 1] Yeah, you can have. You can have a sophisticated, negative bad. I think. I think there’s a middle ground. You don’t have to get ugly, but you can highlight, you know, some of the bad things the other folks are

[0:19:05 Speaker 0] doing. So let’s I want to talk also about, um, you know, the Latinos that did come out for Biden, perhaps talking about, you know, Nevada and Arizona and also, you know, how that kind of connects to the pandemic. Because certainly the pandemic featured, you know, centrally in this campaign, but especially because Latinos have been so hard hit by it. Um And so I think that, you know, while on the one hand Trump was, you know, um, increasing a lot of the fears, uh, the pandemic also, you know, and their reaction to it worked against them.

[0:19:42 Speaker 1] And look, this is a huge story which is is kind of getting buried because of kind of the Texas and the Florida pockets of Trump’s support. But Arizona, my home state, I watch it very closely, you know, for academic reasons, but also personal reasons is an incredible story of a, um of a change that was set off by an action. And that action was SB 10 70. And that overreach of Show me your papers That triggered a mobilization among young Latinos, the Latin Mex community to start mobilizing and turning out. Uh, Arizona. We’ve seen a steady growth in the Arizona population, especially in terms of young folks coming of age. And they have been politicized because of this era of SB 10 70 Joe Arpaio and they’ve been pushing forward and and look, it takes work. And you have seen ah, lot of organizations on the ground in Arizona putting in that work, right? So Mi Familia Vota did incredible work for their Latin X Lucia, Arizona United we dream. And so, you know, they were doing the work on the ground this electoral cycle, even though a little hampered by the pandemic. But this is work that’s been happening for the past eight years, and so it has paid off. You know, if I were a betting woman, I think Arizona is going to go for Biden in the end. But no matter what we were seeing, you know, 70% 78% support for Biden in some of our Latino heavy districts, like like Maricopa and Pima Huma. And so I think this is a really incredible story of seeing a pretty deeper at ST go from red to blue. Maybe we’ll just a blue purple Nevada, same story. In terms of long term political mobilization. We didn’t necessarily have an S B 10 70 motivating moment, but you had the culinary union putting in that work. The United we dream and pushing, pushing, pushing forward. Colorado had kind of already been on this trend. It was a little bit ahead. It had already been purple ing as a result of of, you know, Latinos in the state and progressive whites, but that, you know, Mountain West region is critical to the Democratic. When for Joe Biden?

[0:22:18 Speaker 0] Yeah, And I think also, you know, even when we’re thinking about Pennsylvania and how big

[0:22:24 Speaker 1] you know,

[0:22:24 Speaker 0] Philadelphia came out. You know, there’s lots of Latinos in Philadelphia as well. That really came out for Biden. So I think, you know, in the cities as well. Um, in some of these swing states, we really see Latinos voting, you know, overwhelmingly Democratic.

[0:22:39 Speaker 1] And And look, Danielle in these states, like like Pennsylvania, where the Puerto Rican community just came out in huge support of of President elect Joe Biden. You also have swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin that don’t have huge Latino populations, right? We’re talking about, like, 100,000 Latino votes. I’m looking here. My notes, Um uh, 300,000 votes in Pennsylvania. So not huge electorates like we see in our in our Western states. But when we’re talking about 20,000 vote margin while we’re talking about 17,000 vote margin, the Latino low that’s coming out 70 30 for Joe Biden That is critical. And so I think that the attention to the swing votes is also very important in that northern Midwestern blue wall that the Democrats were able to reconstruct after 2016.

[0:23:41 Speaker 0] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, um, we’re running out of time a little bit, but I’m I’m thinking about the future, right, Because we’re always now 2020. Election is finished. Now we’re onto the next thing. Um and so I think, you know, in in addition to the outreach that Democrats have to do, you know, how do we see Texas especially, um, moving forward? I think that’s been the story that people are talking about. Um, you know, Will it go blue? You know what Will what will we kind of expect to see? I mean, of course, it’s all prediction, But, um, I really think that even though Trump won Texas, that we’re getting closer and closer to really being in play here, um, particularly with the turnout that we saw in, you know, Harris County, Um, you know, this is something that is going to be, you know, a story in the future.

[0:24:34 Speaker 1] So it’s a little context. 20 years ago when George W. Bush was a Republican presidential candidate. He went Texas. I mean, it’s his home state, but way over 20%. And then, you know, you see McCain winning Texas like by 16% in 2000 and eight. And then you see Hillary Clinton lose Texas by 9% and you see Joe Biden lose Texas by 6%. That, to me, is progress. I mean, 6% points. If we keep on this road, we’re gonna be in the margin of error in the next electoral cycle. So I’m very much see. Look, I call Texas a Purple State. Yeah, it’s a it’s a red purple state, but it’s a purple. Say it’s no long. It’s not like you’re Alabama’s and your Arkansas that air, you know, 20 plus. So I think the question is, you know, are we gonna just kind of be a swing state or read the new Pennsylvania, or are we gonna go blue like California? I don’t know, but I do know that were purple. And what is going to be important for the Democrats is to build on the turn out that they got this time around and and the registration So you know, all right, we’re past the election. So what happens in the next 18 months before we get to the next election in 2022? The thing is, the hard work has to keep going in terms of registering folks and that civic engagement that keeps them engaged with the political process in between. So for and and look and Republicans were doing this, they did a bang up job of registering Republicans in that 2018 2020 interim. That’s you know why Texas was more favorable toe Republicans than many thought, because there was an incredible grassroots approach here and Democrats also put in the work and they need to keep putting in the work. And I think that is the future of Texas in not just paying attention to the registration and the turnout during election season. But year, Yeah,

[0:26:33 Speaker 0] and you know, I have to say, you know, the day after the election, you know, folks in Texas that you know that we’re supporting Biden, you know, may have been disappointed. But as Georgia started to turn, I think that that served as a real lesson for you know, some of these states that always come out. Read that. Ah, lot of this grassroots work, uh, is effective. And so, you know, I don’t think people expected Georgia, you know, to go blue. And a lot of that is, you know, thanks to the work, you know, that was being done on the ground. You know, Stacey Abrams, New Georgia Project. All of these organizations that really turned folks, you know, out and to the polls. So I think that Georgia will serve as this kind of hope for, you know, some of these states, um, you know, like Texas and others in the South that, you know, this kind of ground game, you know, can really change things.

[0:27:24 Speaker 1] It’s always about the ground

[0:27:27 Speaker 0] game. All right, well, thank you so much. I’m so glad that we got to have this conversation and that you were able to join us.

[0:27:35 Speaker 1] My pleasure, Daniel. Thanks so much for having me.

[0:27:39 Speaker 0] Hi. All things is Ashley novel. Montero’s the communications associate. A Latino studies. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Make sure to check out the Latino studies Instagram page, Follow us at Latino studies. You t to keep the conversation