NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, March 17th, 2023

Democrats in Washington lost ground with Latino voters despite 2022 wins, data shows

Edi­tor’s Note: Guest con­trib­u­tor Andrew Hong is a data sci­ence stu­dent at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and life­long Wash­ing­ton­ian from South Seat­tle. He has pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a cam­paign con­sul­tant, com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er, statewide coor­di­na­tor of Redis­trict­ing Jus­tice for Wash­ing­ton, and cur­rent­ly serves as a Research Data Ana­lyst at the Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance Data Hub. Andrew can be reached at this email address with any inquiries. NPI is delight­ed to be able to share his time­ly and well researched elec­toral analy­sis in this guest post. 

One of the biggest polit­i­cal shocks in 2020 was the Lati­no vote shift­ing to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with some coun­ties in Tex­as­’s Rio Grande Val­ley shift­ing toward Trump by as high as 50%. Wash­ing­ton’s Lati­nos large­ly bucked that trend in 2020. But in 2022, the Lati­no con­ser­v­a­tive wave reached the Ever­green State.

By ana­lyz­ing data from the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau and Sec­re­tary of State’s 2022 elec­tion results by vot­ing precinct, I’ve esti­mat­ed the mag­ni­tude of the Lati­no Repub­li­can shift was well into dou­ble dig­its. I also mod­eled the degree to which this shift came from depressed Lati­no turnout or his­­tor­i­­cal­­ly-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Lati­no vot­ers cross­ing par­ty lines, which I will expand on fur­ther below.

Democ­rats and pro­gres­sives should care deeply about the Lati­no vote. Lati­nos make up the state’s largest minor­i­ty racial group, and are fast grow­ing in Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton where they form majori­ties in mul­ti­ple counties.

For exam­ple, in Yaki­ma Coun­ty, Lati­nos make up a major­i­ty (51%) of the pop­u­la­tion, up from 36% just twen­ty years pri­or. These com­mu­ni­ties have his­tor­i­cal­ly made up a key part of the Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats’ mul­tira­cial elec­toral coali­tion, and as they grow in size, they rep­re­sent Democ­rats’ best oppor­tu­ni­ty to flip red dis­tricts to win leg­isla­tive super­ma­jor­i­ties in Olympia.

On the oth­er hand, if this year’s trend con­tin­ues, work­ing class Lati­no vot­ers — along­side work­ing class Asian, Black, and Lati­no vot­ers in King Coun­ty — could deliv­er a reemer­gence of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Party.

Electoral data analysis

The first and most obvi­ous sign of wor­ry for Democ­rats was in a local coun­ty com­mis­sion­er race in Yaki­ma. In 2021, a judge ruled that Yaki­ma Coun­ty vio­lat­ed the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Rights Act by bar­ring Lati­no vot­ers’ legal­ly pro­tect­ed abil­i­ty to elect can­di­dates of their choice.

This land­mark deci­sion led to the cre­ation of three coun­ty com­mis­sion dis­tricts — two of which are major­i­­ty-Lati­no dis­tricts that Joe Biden won by dou­ble digits.

Yet in 2022, Democ­rats failed to win a sin­gle district.

In the over­lap­ping, new­­ly-drawn major­i­­ty-Lati­no 15th leg­isla­tive dis­trict, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for state sen­ate only received 32%, down a whop­ping 17% from Biden’s nar­row vic­to­ry in the dis­trict in 2020. While the 15th Dis­trict will like­ly be redrawn by fed­er­al courts next year because it vio­lates the Vot­ing Rights Act by divid­ing minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions and geo­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est, the vast drop in Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port in this dis­trict spells trouble.

These trends extend­ed to statewide races, although to a less­er degree.

For exam­ple, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray earned just 1.2% less of the vote statewide in 2022 than Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell did in 2018.

But crit­i­cal­ly, in Lati­no-heavy Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, Mur­ray dropped 4.8% from Cantwell’s 2018 run. (Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton is defined here as Grant, Yaki­ma, Adams, Franklin, and Ben­ton coun­ties — the cen­ter of the Lati­no com­mu­ni­ty in Wash­ing­ton.) Cantwell in 2018 and Mur­ray in 2022 share sim­i­lar dynam­ics: pop­u­lar incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors run­ning for re-elec­­tion dur­ing a midterm year, each receiv­ing a sim­i­lar final statewide result. Thus, it’s a good pair of races to rep­re­sent gener­ic par­ti­san changes over the past four years.

When dig­ging deep­er into the data, we find that much of the Repub­li­can gains came from major­i­­ty-Lati­no precincts.

Some precincts in East Yaki­ma, East Pas­co, and the Yaki­ma Low­er Val­ley can reach up to 90%+ Lati­no, and these areas had Repub­li­can shifts as high as 35% between 2018 and 2022; this occurs even as major­i­­ty-white precincts in West Yaki­ma and Tri-Cities had actu­al­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic gains.

Indeed, my data mod­el of these two elec­tions at a precinct lev­el approx­i­mates a dra­mat­ic 17% drop in Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port among Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Lati­no vot­ers from 2018 to 2022, while only a 2–3% drop among white voters.

It seems that the polit­i­cal earth­quake that began two years ago in the Rio Grande Val­ley has offi­cial­ly hit Wash­ing­ton, the Ever­green State.

Turnout versus shifting preferences

These pro­found changes raise fur­ther ques­tions: is the Repub­li­can shift in Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton due to turnout (Lati­nos vot­ing in small­er num­bers) or vot­ing choice (Lati­nos switch­ing to the Repub­li­can Par­ty), or both?

By return­ing to the Cantwell 2018-Mur­ray 2022 com­par­i­son, we find turnout decreased in 2022 across Wash­ing­ton, but dropped more in Cen­tral Washington.

Here, my precinct-lev­­el analy­sis deter­mined while white turnout dropped from 78% to 72%, the already low­er Lati­no turnout plunged from 42% to 23% among Lati­nos — a stag­ger­ing 19%. This means Lati­no vot­ers went from being 16% of the Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton elec­torate in 2018 down to 10% in 2022.

While this turnout dif­fer­ence is sig­nif­i­cant, it was not big enough to account for all of the Repub­li­can gains. If we assume Lati­nos and whites vot­ed for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates at the exact same pro­por­tion as they did in 2018, the change in turnout in 2022 would only explain a 2.9% Repub­li­can gain.

But there was a 4.8% Repub­li­can gain, so that means a lit­tle less than half of the GOP shift was not from turnout changes, but from pre­vi­ous­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers vot­ing Repub­li­can in 2022.

We also know that the Repub­li­can gains in Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton were in most­ly heav­i­­ly-Lati­no com­mu­ni­ties like East Yaki­ma, East Pas­co, and the Yaki­ma Low­er Val­ley. So most of those Demo­c­rat­ic-to-Repub­­li­­can vot­ers were like­ly Lati­nos, not whites. So the answer to the ques­tion posed above is both: the Repub­li­can shift was because Lati­nos both vot­ed less, and the ones that did vote vot­ed more Repub­li­can altogether.

An impor­tant caveat, albeit wonky: because we do not have pub­lic data on vot­er reg­is­tra­tion rates by race/ethnicity, this analy­sis does not account for prob­a­ble dis­par­i­ties between white and Lati­no vot­er reg­is­tra­tion rates. 

There­fore, this analy­sis like­ly over­es­ti­mates the over­all share of the vote that is Lati­no, and there­fore over­es­ti­mates how much depressed Lati­no vot­er turnout explains the Repub­li­can shift. Put dif­fer­ent­ly, this mod­el like­ly under­es­ti­mates the true mag­ni­tude of Lati­no vot­ers switch­ing par­ties to vote for Republicans.

Charts showing eligible voting population and projected voteshare by race for 2018 and 2022

Charts show­ing eli­gi­ble vot­ing pop­u­la­tion and pro­ject­ed vote­share by race for 2018 and 2022 (Graph­ic by Andrew Hong)

Conclusion

2018-2022 Central Washington: Modeled Source of Republican Shift

2018–2022 Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton: Mod­eled Source of Repub­li­can Shift (Graph­ic by Andrew Hong)

Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats declared the 2022 cycle a resound­ing vic­to­ry, but a 17% decline in sup­port with­in the fastest-grow­ing minor­i­ty group spells trou­ble for Democ­rats’ future. In ten years, Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton will see mul­ti­ple major­i­­ty-Lati­no leg­isla­tive dis­tricts and a new major­i­­ty-minor­i­­ty con­gres­sion­al district.

Democ­rats have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge for anoth­er seat in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and achieve a leg­isla­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty to sub­mit state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to vot­ers. But their lack of atten­tion to the Lati­no sleep­ing polit­i­cal giant could pave way to Repub­li­can dom­i­nance in the region.

This lack of atten­tion can be seen in that no Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates were recruit­ed to run in a Biden+15 dis­trict for Yaki­ma Coun­ty Com­mis­sion — a painful missed opportunity.

2018-2022 Central Washington Republican gains, by race

2018–2022 Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­can gains, by race (Graph­ic by Andrew Hong)

If the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty invests into can­di­date recruit­ment and fundrais­ing, it can make up some of this ground. But a mes­sen­ger with­out a strong mes­sage won’t deliv­er the votes. Polling by the Pew Research Cen­ter, among oth­ers, has shown Lati­nos gen­er­al­ly pri­or­i­tize eco­nom­ic issues over social issues.

Some polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gists, such as Ruy Teix­eira, have argued — cor­rect­ly, in my view — that Democ­rats have lost work­ing class Lati­no vot­ers by de-empha­­siz­ing eco­nom­ic issues for social issues in an effort to appeal to upper-class sub­ur­ban vot­ers. That’s come at the cost of work­ing class vot­ers of all races. In fact, Democ­rats also lost ground with work­ing class Asian and Black com­mu­ni­ties last year in my home in South Seat­tle and South King County.

To buck this right­ward trend, Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats need to embrace a clear, pop­ulist, eco­nom­ic-focused mes­sage — and deliv­er leg­is­la­tion — that speaks to work­ing class vot­ers of col­or. They also need to invest in can­di­date recruit­ment, cam­paigns, and orga­niz­ers in these communities.

With the sup­port of work­ing class Lati­no vot­ers, Democ­rats could win a his­toric statewide man­date in these next two decades.

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