Hispanic Voters Persuaded by Republican Message

As Rich Lowry noted earlier this week, the latest Wall Street Journal poll showing nearly an even split in party preference among Hispanic voters is yet more evidence that Republicans are in a period of breaking through to something much closer to parity with Democrats among Hispanic Americans and are now capable of winning those voters outright in some elections. Rich observes that this is a rebuttal to the charge that “Republicans couldn’t be tough-minded on immigration and win Hispanics.” That is true, but it is also only half of the story.

For a long time, the demographic triumphalism of Democrats — premised as so much of it was on the growth of the Hispanic vote — was matched by a two-sided counsel of pessimism bordering on despair on the right. Like the Democrats, both factions on the right looked at California’s dramatic decline from a Nixon/Reagan stronghold to a blue state after 1992 and a deep-blue state after 2008. Republicans last won a Senate race in California in 1988, when Pete Wilson won 53 percent to 44 percent, and last fielded a competitive candidate in 1994, when Michael Huffington lost to Dianne Feinstein 47 percent to 45 percent. Since 2000, Carly Fiorina’s ten-point loss in 2010 is the only Senate race in which a California Republican has come within 19 points, and Republicans have not even had a candidate on the ballot since 2012.

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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As Rich Lowry noted earlier this week, the latest Wall Street Journal poll showing nearly an even split in party preference among Hispanic voters is yet more evidence that Republicans are in a period of breaking through to something much closer to parity with Democrats among Hispanic Americans and are now capable of winning those voters outright in some elections. Rich observes that this is a rebuttal to the charge that “Republicans couldn’t be tough-minded on immigration and win Hispanics.” That is true, but it is also only half of the story.

For a long time, the demographic triumphalism of Democrats — premised as so much of it was on the growth of the Hispanic vote — was matched by a two-sided counsel of pessimism bordering on despair on the right. Like the Democrats, both factions on the right looked at California’s dramatic decline from a Nixon/Reagan stronghold to a blue state after 1992 and a deep-blue state after 2008. Republicans last won a Senate race in California in 1988, when Pete Wilson won 53 percent to 44 percent, and last fielded a competitive candidate in 1994, when Michael Huffington lost to Dianne Feinstein 47 percent to 45 percent. Since 2000, Carly Fiorina’s ten-point loss in 2010 is the only Senate race in which a California Republican has come within 19 points, and Republicans have not even had a candidate on the ballot since 2012.