Midterm Elections & Latino Voters: Mixed Results for GOP

With a handful of notable exceptions, Tuesday was an enormously disappointing night for Republicans. As of this writing, NBC’s Decision Desk is projecting that Republicans will have a House majority of 221 seats to Democrats’ 214. That’s a 15-seat net gain for the GOP, but nowhere near the wave election that many predicted. (Some races, though, have yet to be called, and NBC’s provisional projection has a +/−7-seat margin of error.) Republicans and conservatives have embarked on the internal soul-searching — and finger-pointing — process that usually follows a disappointing showing in an election. Democrats, on the other hand, are giddy. Biden is even reportedly taking his party’s surprisingly strong performance as a sign that he should indeed launch a reelection bid in 2024: “He’s running,” an unnamed senior White House aide told Politico.

One of the important demographic questions going into the midterms was the partisan preferences of Latino voters. Republicans made significant inroads with Latinos in 2020, particularly in regions such as South Texas and Florida. This emergent “multiracial working-class GOP” narrative saw mixed results this Tuesday, leaving us with more questions than answers. It was not a devastating defeat, by any means, but far from the resounding realignment that many Republicans were hoping for.

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Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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With a handful of notable exceptions, Tuesday was an enormously disappointing night for Republicans. As of this writing, NBC’s Decision Desk is projecting that Republicans will have a House majority of 221 seats to Democrats’ 214. That’s a 15-seat net gain for the GOP, but nowhere near the wave election that many predicted. (Some races, though, have yet to be called, and NBC’s provisional projection has a +/−7-seat margin of error.) Republicans and conservatives have embarked on the internal soul-searching — and finger-pointing — process that usually follows a disappointing showing in an election. Democrats, on the other hand, are giddy. Biden is even reportedly taking his party’s surprisingly strong performance as a sign that he should indeed launch a reelection bid in 2024: “He’s running,” an unnamed senior White House aide told Politico.

One of the important demographic questions going into the midterms was the partisan preferences of Latino voters. Republicans made significant inroads with Latinos in 2020, particularly in regions such as South Texas and Florida. This emergent “multiracial working-class GOP” narrative saw mixed results this Tuesday, leaving us with more questions than answers. It was not a devastating defeat, by any means, but far from the resounding realignment that many Republicans were hoping for.