PUEBLO, Colorado — Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is testing a long-term trend among Hispanics: Members of a family that has been in the country for multiple generations and uses primarily English are more likely to vote Republican than those who more recently arrived in the United States.
The number of Latinos in the United States is growing, making them a key demographic group whose votes are coveted by both major parties. While traditionally they vote for Democrats, that support isn’t ironclad.
Leo Lopez’s father, who came to the United States from Mexico in the 1980s, is a Democrat and firm Hillary Clinton supporter. But Lopez himself, an accounting student at the state university in this heavily Hispanic, blue-collar town, is leaning toward Trump.
“I’m kind of scoping them all out,” Lopez said at a recent Donald Trump rally here. “Trump’s tax plan would help me out more.”
Ninety percent of Hispanics who primarily speak Spanish identify as Democrats, but of those who mostly use English that number drops to 59 percent, according to a Pew Hispanic Center survey released earlier this month. Those English-dominant voters are by no means leaving the Democratic Party in droves, however. Overall, Clinton leads among Latino voters by nearly 3-1.
But of Latino Trump supporters, 83 percent are US-born. A similar pattern was seen in 2012, when Hispanics who mainly speak Spanish supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping margin of 59 percentage points. English-speaking Latinos still overwhelmingly supported the president, but the margin dropped to 40 points.
“For them the issues of immigration are much closer,” Mark Hugo Lopez of the Pew Hispanic Center said of first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans, who tend to be poorer than longer-established families. By contrast, English-dominant Latinos are usually wealthier and consume less Spanish-language media. The great exception is among Cuban-Americans. First-generation immigrants from Cuba lean Republican — their politics are partly defined by their flight from a communist country — but their children are more likely to vote Democratic.
As immigration from Latin America slows, an increasing percentage of Hispanics are US-born, but how those people vote is an open question.
“It’s not a single bloc that will forever be tied to one party,” Lopez said. “You might see Americans in 50 years who say, ‘Yes, I have a Mexican heritage, but I don’t consider myself Mexican or Hispanic — I’m American.’”
But Trump’s harsh words against immigrants could turn American-born Latinos against the Republican Party by making even them feel unwelcome. “If you’re going to force someone to vote on their ethnicity, they will,” said Sylvia Manzano of the polling group Latino Decisions. “Latino voters who voted against Mitt Romney did so on health care and the economy but didn’t think, “This guy hates people like me.’ This thing with Trump is a qualitatively different animal.”
The dynamic is on display in Pueblo, a city of 100,000 in southern Colorado that is 44 percent Hispanic.— AP
