Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation

by Matt Barreto, Gary Segura

  Of course, in and of itself, growth in the registration of California’s minority population does not explain the state’s Democratic shift. For this to be the case, these new voters must not only identify as Democrats but also turn out to vote for Democratic candidates. With respect to the first requirement, the evidence could not be clearer. For instance, in an analysis of voter registration records in Los Angeles County between 1992 and 1998, Matt Barreto and Nathan Woods found that just 10% of new Latino registrants were affiliated with the Republican Party in the aftermath of the three so-called anti-Latino propositions in California.4

  More importantly, the anti-Latino initiatives motivated many newly registered Latinos to vote. Adrian Pantoja, Ricardo Ramírez, and Gary Segura found that Latinos who naturalized and registered to vote during the 1990s were significantly more likely to turn out.5 Likewise, Barreto, Ramírez, and Woods found that the best predictor of voter turnout in 1996 and 2000 was whether or not Latinos were newly registered following Proposition 187.6 The overall result, then, was more Latinos registering than in previous years, and more Latinos voting as Democrats.

  The 2000 presidential election provided an opportunity for the GOP to regain its standing with Latinos in California and elsewhere. George W. Bush used his understanding of Latino voters in Texas to rally support for the Republican ticket in the Latino community. However, even as Bush attempted to introduce a new compassionate face to the Republican Party, the Republican brand continued to be problematic for California Latino voters. Most notably, a survey conducted by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute during the 2000 election revealed that 53% of Latino voters in California still associated the Republican Party with Pete Wilson.7

  More generally, Figure 9.3 illustrates that as the Latino vote grew California became a more Democratic state. Most notably, the Latino vote became 10% to 13% more Democratic following the anti-immigrant policies endorsed by the GOP in 1994. In 1992 Democrats won 65% of the Latino vote, in 1996 they won 75% of the Latino vote, and by 2012 Democrats were winning 78% of the Latino vote.

  In addition to voting in presidential elections, Latinos in California have also become consistent Democratic voters in other statewide elections since the Reagan era. Statewide results indicate that Latinos voted two to one on average in support of Democratic candidates for governor and US senator in every election between 1992 and 2002.8

  FIGURE 9.3California Presidential Vote for the Democratic Candidate, 1980–2012

  Some observers saw the 2003 gubernatorial recall election as a potential shift away from the Democratic Party.9 Most analysts now suggest, however, that the circumstances and context of this election were unique and that inferring trends from it is not valid.10 Still, that election does highlight just how important Latino voters are to the Democratic Party in California: owing in part to the approximately ten-point drop in Latino Democratic support, Democratic governor Gray Davis was recalled from office and replaced with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.11 Had Latinos turned out at slightly greater rates and voted at their average support rate for Democratic candidates, Davis would not have been recalled in 2003.

  THE PROPOSITION 187 EFFECT

  Research by Shaun Bowler, Stephen Nicholson, and Gary Segura provides perhaps the most comprehensive evidence of the broad and lasting effects of Propositions 187, 209, and 227 and the GOP’s embrace of anti-immigrant politics.12 Specifically, using data from the California field poll from 1980 to 2002, they demonstrate at the individual level of analysis that California’s partisan shift represented more than a demographic transition from white Republicans to Latino Democrats.

  As noted earlier, Latinos in California had been moving toward the GOP prior to 1994, as was happening in much of the rest of the country. Perhaps because of its role in proposing and passing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the Republican Party experienced substantial gains in voter identification among California Latinos.13 Starting in 1994, however, this trend was reversed as large numbers of California Latinos moved away from the Republican Party and toward the Democratic Party.

  Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura’s analysis suggests specifically that, prior to the initiatives, there had been a partisan breakdown among Latinos that favored Democrats 38% to 34%, with a substantial number of Latinos registering as independents but largely voting Democratic.14 After the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998, the Democratic advantage among Latinos increased from four percentage points to fifty-one, while the probability that a Latino would identify as a Republican decreased from 34% to 12%.

  Interestingly, their analysis indicates that absent the three ballot propositions, and all other things remaining the same, over the twenty-two years there was an almost 18% increase in the probability of a Latino thinking of himself or herself as a Republican. This, of course, makes the results for the ballot initiatives even more compelling: the propositions effectively eradicated all of the GOP’s gains among Latinos between 1980 and 2002. The propositions reversed a trend that had been drawing larger numbers of Latino voters into the GOP fold. Moreover, it was the cumulative effect of the Republicans’ sustained support for anti-immigrant policies that made the pro-Democratic shift so sizable.15

  While the magnitude of these effects may be startling, the general direction of the relationship should not be all that surprising given that Propositions 187, 209, and 227 targeted Latinos. What California Republicans probably did not anticipate, however, was the extension of these effects to other segments of the state’s electorate. To this end, research by Tali Mendelberg suggests that when white voters perceive campaign messages as overtly racist, these messages are less likely to activate anti-minority stereotypes or racial resentment and instead may be perceived as violating norms of racial equality.16 Indeed, the racially charged rhetoric (proponents referred to Proposition 187 as the “Save Our State” initiative and produced messaging that blamed Latinos and immigrants for most of the state’s economic and social hardships) combined with the partisan nature of the campaigns surrounding the initiatives created a context that may have caused white voters to question their partisan loyalties.17

  Consistent with these expectations, Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura found evidence of backlash among white Californians.18 Prior to Prop 187, Republicans had an eight-point advantage among whites, and the predicted probability that an Anglo Californian would identify as a Republican was 38%, as compared to a 30% probability of identifying as a Democrat, all else remaining the same. After the passage of the three propositions, Democrats had reversed the situation: they held a six-point advantage over Republicans, 37% to 31%, with the largest shifts occurring after the passage of Propositions 187 (in 1994) and 227 (in 1998). Perhaps more importantly, the effect among non-Hispanic whites, though smaller in magnitude as compared to Latinos, erased much of the rightward shift of the white population over the time period studied.

  While the GOP may have anticipated, yet underestimated, the political blowback from Latinos, it is unlikely that they expected blowback from Anglo voters. Had this factored into their strategic calculus, it is unlikely that prominent Republicans in the state would have attached their names to the anti-immigrant propositions. As a consequence of this miscalculation, by 2002 both Latinos and non-Hispanic whites were substantially more likely to be Democrats and less likely to be Republicans than before Proposition 187.

  Since 2002, there is little evidence suggesting that the trends documented by Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura are abating (see Figure 9.3) or that California Latinos have forgotten what occurred in the 1990s.19 Even in 2010, when Democrat Jerry Brown squared off against Republican Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race, 80% of Latino voters were very or somewhat concerned that Whitman had appointed Pete Wilson as a campaign co-chair—twelve years after Wilson left office and sixteen years after the passage of Proposition 187!

  HAS THE GOP HIT ROCK BOTTOM IN CALIFORNIA?

  Given the Republicans’ emaciated standing in the Golden State, it seems hard to
believe that the party could become even less of a factor in California politics in coming years. However, with a depleted party organization and no statewide officeholders or prominent mayors around whom the party might rally, it is equally difficult to imagine scenarios that would return the GOP to its prior standing anytime soon. The GOP’s best path to relevancy may be slowly and methodically expanding its ranks within the state’s delegation to the US House of Representatives and in the California Legislature. Yet even in these more homogenous and geographically concentrated electoral contexts, analysis conducted by Latino Decisions suggests that a number of districts presently held by Republicans are vulnerable to Latino influence and hence are potential Democratic pickups.

  California’s House Districts

  Nationally, there are forty-four Republican-held and sixty-one Democratic-held districts where the 2012 Latino voting-age population was larger than the 2012 margin of victory. Depending on the ratio between the Latino voting-age population and the incumbent’s 2012 margin of victory (as well as the district’s 2012 presidential vote), these districts can be placed into one of three tiers, as illustrated in Table 9.A1 in the appendix.

  Given the growth in California’s Latino population, the average Latino voting-age population in California’s fifty-three House districts is 34%. This is roughly two and a half times the national average. In thirty-one California House districts, the Latino voting-age population exceeds the 2012 margin of victory. While Democrats represent most of these districts, including six tier 1 districts (see Table 9.A1), in 2012 Republicans did win nine of them. Among these nine districts, three Republican incumbents appear to be particularly susceptible to the politics of immigration and Latino influence: Jeff Denham (CA-10th) and Gary Miller (CA-31st), who represent tier 1 districts, and Buck McKeon (CA-25th), whose district was classified as tier 2 but will be retained by the GOP.

  So while the Republicans’ failure to respond constructively to California’s changing political demography has cost the party plenty in the last two decades, they could lose yet more seats. The continued vulnerability of California’s dwindling number of House Republicans is largely an artifact of the state’s 2001 redistricting plan, which was designed to preserve the state’s seniority in Congress by protecting incumbents of both parties. As a consequence, just one of California’s House seats (the 11th in 2006) changed parties under the old maps—a particularly notable accomplishment given that majority control of the House of Representatives changed parties twice during the decade.

  With the passage of Proposition 20 in 2010, however, authority over redistricting was removed from the California Legislature and placed in the hands of a fourteen-member panel of citizens, the Citizens Redistricting Commission (which also oversees state legislative redistricting). As part of this reform, neither incumbency nor partisanship could be considered in the state’s new congressional boundaries. Instead, districts were required to follow city and county boundaries and, wherever possible, preserve neighborhoods and communities of interests.

  By removing the political machinations that often determine redistricting outcomes, the districts that emerged in California in 2011 are more organic and may allow for a truer expression of voters’ political preferences than is the norm in House elections. Unfortunately for Republicans, outside of a few dwindling pockets, the new maps provide another indicator of how little appetite California voters have for the GOP and its policies. Running in unprotected districts, Republicans lost four times as many House seats in 2012 than during the prior five elections combined—not a promising omen for a delegation whose ranks have dwindled to fifteen.

  The California Legislature

  The dynamics working against Republicans in California are even more visible in the California Legislature, where, since the 2012 election, Republicans hold a total of 37 of 120 seats—12 in the Senate and 25 in the Assembly. The state legislative context is also where the effects of California’s open primary—another reform intended to weaken partisan influences—can be more easily observed. Because of another 2010 ballot measure, California elections are now two-round affairs with all voters and candidates operating in the same pool. The top two vote finishers, regardless of party, move to the second round; this process ensures a majority winner, but not necessarily two-party competition.

  As with the state’s new redistricting process, its primary reforms offer indirect evidence of the GOP’s problems this time in terms of the party’s capacity to even field candidates. Specifically, in November 2012, all eighty Assembly seats and half of the state’s forty Senate seats were on the ballot. However, just 74% of these contests featured a Republican and Democrat competing on election day. In twenty districts (eleven Democratic and seven Republican Assembly districts and two Democratic Senate districts), two candidates of the same party faced off. In four other contests Democrats defeated minor party opponents, and in two Assembly districts Democrats ran unopposed. Put another way, in nineteen of one hundred state legislative elections, the Republicans did not even have a candidate. If that was not bad enough, the politically neutral district boundaries further exposed the GOP’s diminished standing as the Democrats picked up three additional state Senate seats in 2012.

  Given the growth in the state’s Latino population (as measured in the 2010 census), in forty-nine of the seventy-four state legislative districts that were contested by both parties in 2012, the Latino voting-age population exceeds the margin of victory, and in over half (sixty-four) of the seats in the California Legislature the Latino voting-age population exceeds either the 2012 margin or the party registration difference between Democrats and Republicans (see Table 9.A2 in the appendix). Yet, as is the case with California’s US House seats, there remain a handful of competitive state legislative districts where Latino voters are positioned to be influential in coming election cycles.

  We applied the methodology used to identify Latino-influence districts in our US House analysis to the California Assembly and Senate, with three differences (see Table 9.A2 for results). First, we did not incorporate information about the 2012 presidential vote. Second, absent election returns, for the twenty Senate seats that will be on the ballot in 2014, we used voter registration data to estimate competitiveness. We consider a district competitive if the difference in Democratic and Republican voter registration is ten points or less (based on the California secretary of state’s February 2013 update). Third, because of data limitations, we used the 2010 census, as opposed to the 2012 voting-age population estimates. Thus, if anything, our analysis underestimated Latino voting-age population and overestimated the white electorate.

  Across both chambers there are twenty districts—nine in the Senate and eleven in the Assembly—where either the 2012 margin of victory or the two-party voter registration difference is 10% or less and the Latino voting-age population exceeds the difference in support between Democrats and Republicans. In the Assembly, two Democratic-held districts (the 36th and 65th) and two Republican-held districts (the 40th and the 60th) are rated as tier 1 Latino-influence districts, as are two Democratic-held Senate districts (the 5th and the 34th) and three Republican-held Senate districts (the 12th, the 14th, and the 18th). That is, these districts are highly competitive and have significant numbers of voting-age Latinos. The three tier 1 Republican-held Senate seats, all of which will be contested in 2014, appear to be particularly vulnerable owing to the substantial Democratic registration advantages and majority-minority voting-age populations. Indeed, all three have Latino voting-age populations that either exceed or are close to 50%. The other eleven districts are rated as tier 2 districts where Latinos are influential, but these districts are less competitive. In terms of partisanship, Democrats hold seven of the tier 2 districts, including four in the Senate.

  The implications of this are at least twofold. Even with the Democrats enjoying supermajority status in both chambers of the California Legislature, the relentlessness of the state’s political demography provides addi
tional opportunities for the Democrats to expand their margins. While so much of the increased Democratic support in California stems from the growth in the Latino electorate and these voters’ overwhelming support for Democratic candidates, the full consequences of this shift may not yet be fully realized in the California Legislature.

  In contrast, even if the GOP were to put forth a less alienating brand of politics, there are few opportunities for the party to improve its standing owing to the limited number of competitive state legislative districts. To this end, even if the GOP were to sweep all tier 1 and tier 2 districts in 2014 and 2016 (while holding all of its present seats), the party would still be a significant minority in both chambers.

  Looking back to the mid-1990s and early 2000s in California politics provides many clear lessons for the Republican Party today. The California that delivered 60% of the vote to Obama in 2012 did not occur by happenstance; not long ago, California was a winnable state for Republican presidential candidates.

  Today the Republican Party in California is in free fall. Republican presidential candidates have lost the last six elections in California and thus abdicated to the Democrats 20% of the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. Presently, there are no Republican statewide officeholders and the party’s ranks have fallen below one-third in both chambers of the California Legislature, while Republicans represent just over one-quarter of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives. In 2010, when Republicans picked up sixty-three House seats nationally, the party failed to pick up a single seat in California. Running in politically neutral districts in 2012, the GOP lost seven state legislative seats and four congressional seats and is poised to lose additional seats in coming elections. Consistent with these dismal electoral showings, the share of Californians registered as Republican declined from 37% in 1992 to less than 30% in 2012.20 If these trends continue, by 2020 more Californians will be registered as independents than as Republicans.