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

by Matt Barreto, Gary Segura

  The larger average vote share for Democrats is a key reason why the party gained only eight seats in 2012 despite winning more than 1.5 million more votes nationally than the GOP. Perhaps more significant to the immigration debate, House seats presently held by Republicans have an average voting-age population (VAP) that is over three-quarters white. In contrast, Democratic House seats have on average 30% fewer voting-age whites and over twice as many voting-age African Americans and Asian Americans and nearly twice as many voting-age Latinos as their Republican counterparts.

  It is with these data in mind that incumbent House members of both parties often claim to be more concerned about primary challengers than a strong general election opponent from the opposition party. In particular, for Republicans who are concerned about a primary challenge from their right flank, the path of least resistance may be to oppose any legislation that could be depicted either as being weak on security or providing “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants.

  However, the pessimism embodied in these predictions overlooks three important points. First, polling suggests that immigration reform is not an animating issue for most Republican primary voters and that most Republican voters generally support the same reforms as Latinos. Second, the Latino population is growing everywhere, including in GOP House districts. Indeed, if anything, these data, which use 2010 US census voting-age estimates, underestimate Latino shares, while overestimating white shares. Third, developing expectations about members’ behavior in terms of average district characteristics obscures the individual contexts in which Republican incumbents are vulnerable and Latinos may be influential. So, while voting-age Latinos may have little presence in most Republican-held districts, there are a significant number of districts where Latinos are positioned to affect outcomes in 2014 and, by extension, partisan control of the House of Representatives.

  To assess these dynamics, Tables 10.A1 and 10.A2 in the appendix present district-level analyses that examine all seats where the 2010 Latino voting-age population either exceeds or approaches the 2012 margin of victory, as well as districts won by the opposition party’s presidential candidate. In total, forty-four Republican (Table 10.A1) and fifty-eight Democratic (Table 10.A2) districts meet these criteria. Each party’s seats are then placed into one of three tiers according to their vulnerability and the potential effect of Latino voters in 2014. Tables 10.A1 and 10.A2 also include columns detailing the incumbent’s 2012 margin of victory, the difference between President Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s vote shares in the district, the district’s white and Latino voting-age populations, and the member’s vote on funding for DACA.6

  Table 10.A1 indicates that there are fourteen tier 1 and ten tier 2 Republican districts where Latino voters could be decisive in 2014.7 As a consequence, if House Republicans opt for hard-line immigration policies that are out of step not just with the preferences of Latino voters but with the public more generally, then the party may push already vulnerable incumbents into untenable positions heading into 2014. Given that the Democrats need a net gain of just seventeen seats to secure the majority, failure by the House Republicans to successfully navigate immigration legislation could prove quite costly for the GOP, even if the vast majority of House Republicans win reelection with minimal competition.

  As we detailed earlier, a consistent finding in Latino Decisions’ polling conducted in 2013 is that the Republican Party has much to lose when it comes to immigration if it chooses to play an obstructionist role. However, by playing a constructive role in passing immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship, the GOP would be able to get beyond an issue that makes it nearly impossible for it to make inroads with Latino voters, while at the same time providing valuable political coverage for its most vulnerable House incumbents. If the party instead pushes legislation that focuses only on enforcement or that proposes to make an already cumbersome path to citizenship even more arduous, then Mitt Romney’s 2012 performance among Latino voters may be the GOP’s high-water mark for quite some time.

  As the data in Table 10.A2 make clear, Democrats also have great incentive to act on immigration reform. In fact, there are more Democratic districts where the Latino vote may be influential in 2014. Much of this interparty difference stems, however, from the large number of Democratic seats with majority-minority shares, or near-majority-minority shares. Indeed, many Democratic House members with the largest 2012 margins of victory represent districts where voting-age minorities constitute a majority or a near-majority. Thus, while Latino and minority voters may be “deterministic” in these districts, given the large 2012 margins and the strong Democratic tilt of these voters, it is difficult to think of scenarios in which the outcomes of these 2014 House elections would be affected by short-term political forces to the degree that these districts would swing toward the GOP.

  Still, there are a significant number of vulnerable Democrats. Specifically, seventeen Democrats are considered tier 1 targets for Republicans (six from districts carried by Romney), compared to fourteen Republicans (six of whom represent districts that President Obama won). Given that historically the president’s party loses on average thirty House seats in a midterm election, Democratic support for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship may insulate Democratic incumbents representing marginal seats. Thus, while the Democrats have received strong support from Latino voters in recent election cycles, as polling by Latino Decisions highlights, continued turnout for Democrats depends for many Latinos on the role that Democrats play in immigration reform.

  In sum, there are a sufficient number of House seats presently held by both parties where Latino voters could tilt the outcome in 2014 in a manner that determines which party controls the House of Representatives in 2015.

  Given the analysis in this chapter, we conclude by considering what it will take for the GOP to improve its electoral standing with Latino voters. Any comment on this possibility, however, requires a nuanced understanding of the Latino vote.

  We could argue, for instance, that GOP leadership on immigration would immediately move lots of voters. On a political level, however, logical and empirical inconsistencies emerge. For most Latino voters, rewarding Republicans necessarily means punishing Democrats. That is, irrespective of congressional action or inaction on immigration reform, for Latino voters to support Republican House candidates in 2014 (and beyond) would require that they reevaluate and change their extant partisan preferences (and of course, for these votes to “matter” these voters must reside in one of the districts identified in Tables 10.A1 and 10.A2). The vote-switching literature does allow individual preferences to vary across different offices and levels of government.8 The vote-switching behavior by the most liberal Latinos that is required, however, if the “harm-to-Democrats” theory is going to work is unlikely to occur in the same congressional district.

  On the other hand, there are three other paths to electoral influence that could tilt in the GOP’s direction. First, there is demonstrably a Latino population that is less predisposed to vote Democratic. These voters have a history of voting for the GOP, may not be as liberal as other Latinos, and find themselves in the Democratic column precisely because of the GOP’s rhetoric and positioning on immigration and other Latino policy priorities such as health care and education.

  Earlier, we illustrated that almost half of all Latino registered voters have a history of having voted GOP in the past. The existence of a sizable cohort of prior Republican voters among Latinos suggests that there is considerable room for growth absent the party’s present handling of immigration. In the simplest terms, if 40% of Latinos voted for George W. Bush and only 23% supported Mitt Romney, the implication is that a significant share—maybe as much as 17% to 20% of the national Latino electorate—is movable, absent the anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric and party image.

  Second, there is the issue of abstention. Often less examined in the immigration debate is the peril that the Democrats
may face if they fail to act or are perceived to have acted ineffectively. In 2012 President Obama faced a significant uphill climb with Latino voters, whose enthusiasm was low given his administration’s record number of deportations and failure even to propose comprehensive immigration reform legislation in his first term. These voters were not anxious to vote Republican, but some might have been contented not to have voted at all in the absence of administrative action on DACA.

  Finally, the decline of hostile rhetoric from Republicans may simply result in undermobilization for Democratic-leaning Latinos. The poisonous debate over immigration during the last several election cycles has helped to mobilize a larger share of left-leaning Latino voters to register and turn out. Even if the GOP does not persuade a meaningful share of Latino voters to move to its column and the Democrats do nothing to disappoint Latinos, simply eliminating the negative rhetoric and deemphasizing the issue of immigration could provide space for GOP brand recovery. More importantly, getting immigration off the table would remove the mobilizing effect the issue has had and conceivably reduce the Democratic vote share merely through declining Latino enthusiasm for voting.

  There is evidence of this enthusiasm gap in the record of the 2010 election. Latino Decisions’ weekly tracking poll showed significant improvement in enthusiasm and intended turnout after Senator Harry Reid brought the DREAM Act up for a vote in the Senate. Without action—even unsuccessful action—Latino voters who might otherwise have voted Democratic were less enthused and less likely to turn out. Action motivated enthusiasm. Alternatively, the evidence is also clear that hostile GOP rhetoric motivates Latinos to go to the polls. Less hostility and the passage of immigration reform might demobilize parts of this electorate.

  We recognize that handicapping particular elections should always be approached with caution, as the most important long-term factor shaping each party’s electoral fortunes is the distribution of partisanship in the electorate. Nevertheless, there are intervening factors and events that can significantly alter the partisan dynamic. In our estimation, comprehensive immigration reform is one such factor that may loom particularly large in November 2014.

  Although President Obama’s aggregate vote share declined by 2% between 2008 and 2012, his support among Latino voters increased by 4%. How much of that shift was due to the changing composition of the Latino electorate, and how much stemmed from preference changes among the Latinos who voted in both elections? That question has important implications. Our findings indicate that Latinos who supported McCain stuck with Romney only 65% of the time, compared to 84% of non-Hispanic McCain backers. Or put differently, Romney’s low levels of Latino support were not simply a function of the changing composition of the electorate, but also resulted from changes in the preferences of Latino voters.9 For the GOP to fend off the electoral consequences of demographic change, the party must persuade those Latino voters who are open to supporting Republican candidates that the age of hostility is over. The failure of immigration reform would make this all but impossible.

  *An earlier version of parts of this chapter appeared as Elizabeth Bergman, Gary Segura, and Matt Barreto, “Immigration Politics and the Electoral Consequences: Anticipating the Dynamics of Latino Vote in the 2014 Election,” California Journal of Politics and Policy (February 14, 2014), DOI: 10.1515/cjpp-2013-0046, available at: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cjpp-ahead-of-print/cjpp-2013-0046/cjpp-2013-0046.xml?format=INT.

  Chapter 11

  OBAMACARE FROM THE LATINO PERSPECTIVE

  For a number of reasons, the success of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) lies in its ability to increase health insurance access for groups like the Latino population. With their demographic profile of being generally younger and heavily uninsured, the Latino population in the United States occupies a “sweet spot” for those making projections regarding the potential impact of the ACA. Latinos lack health insurance at the highest rates of any minority group in the nation. In 2010, 30.7% of the Hispanic population was not covered by health insurance, compared to 11.7% of the non-Hispanic white population. Owing to these high rates of non-insurance, the ACA is projected to expand insurance to 9 million Latinos.1 Since insurance is the primary barrier to health care for Latinos, the new health care reform bill is especially critical for the Latino community.

  Access to health care coverage continues to be a major concern for the Latino population. Despite the fact that their employment rate is similar to that of other racial and ethnic groups, Latinos disproportionately lack employer-based insurance. Also, Latinos’ access to employer-based insurance has declined in the past decade.2 Factors such as citizenship requirements, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status help to explain why Latinos disproportionately lack employer-based insurance compared to other racial and ethnic groups.3 Furthermore, Latinos are more likely to work in industries that do not provide health benefits, such as agriculture and the service, mining, domestic, and construction industries.4

  Beyond lacking health insurance, Latinos face other barriers to gaining access to health care, including language barriers, a lack of interpreter services, and a lack of Latina/o doctors in the United States.5 All of these barriers have led to less health care, less utilization of health services, and health care policies that are poorly suited to the needs of the Latino community.6

  These barriers to health care and Latinos’ low levels of health insurance have had a negative impact on their health status. Latinos experience higher mortality rates from diabetes, homicide, chronic liver disease, and HIV infection when compared to the total population and to whites.7 Also, Latinos have higher rates of stomach cancer, childhood asthma, and obesity than non-Hispanic whites.8 Moreover, Latinas experience alarmingly high rates of cervical cancer—double those of white women.9 The disparities in their access to health care clearly has a negative impact on Latinos’ health status and is the reason why the ACA’s projected positive impact on their access to insurance is so vital to Latinos.

  If, for all these reasons, the ACA is vital to Latinos, it is equally true that the support of Latinos is simultaneously important to the successful implementation of the law. Latinos are the youngest population in the United States. As of 2012, the median age of the non-Hispanic white population was 42.3, while the median age for Asian Americans was about nine years younger at 33.2, blacks were over eleven years younger than whites at 30.9, and Latinos were about fifteen years younger, with a median age of 27.6. Given the need for the ACA marketplaces to attract young (and healthy) Americans to enroll to bring down overall costs, Latinos’ youthfulness adds to the need for this population to have high enrollment levels.

  WHAT DO LATINOS THINK ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM?

  While the literature on Latinos’ health disparities is vast and informative, less is known about their attitudes toward health policy. The limited but growing literature in this area includes some studies on Latinos’ attitudes toward health care policy in particular states. For example, Gabriel Sanchez and his co-authors use data from New Mexico to examine differences between Latinos and non-Latino whites in attitudes toward health care policies.10 They find that Latinos are more likely than non-Latino whites to feel that affordable health care programs are important. Harry Pachon, Matt Barreto, and Frances Marquez have demonstrated that the policy preferences of Latinos in California are different from those of non-Latinos in that state.11 They find that the health care policy preferences of most people in California center on HMO reform. Latinos’ policy preferences for health care reform, however, center on access to affordable health care.

  This chapter builds on this work by exploring Latinos’ attitudes toward the ACA and federal health care reform more generally. Because Latino Decisions has been tracking the attitudes of the Latino electorate and the overall population toward health care reform since 2009, our research team has more insight than anyone else into how this critical population’s views toward the ACA have evolved over time.12

&nb
sp; The first survey, before the passage of the law, revealed that Latinos supported the expansion of health coverage, and a strong majority (61%) believed that the federal government should ensure that all people have health insurance, even if it meant raising taxes. As reflected in Figure 11.1, this support for universal health coverage among Latinos was higher than it was among the general US population at the time.

  Despite their strong support for expansion of coverage, the November 2009 survey revealed that a large segment (44%) of the Latino population felt that public officials did not take their health care needs into account “much” or “at all” during the national health care debate. Why did so many Latinos feel that Congress overlooked their interests when crafting the Affordable Care Act?

  FIGURE 11.1Proportion of Latino Individuals Who Support the Expansion of Health Care Coverage, November 2009

  Source: Latino Decisions, November 2009.

  Our survey provided some insights into this question. For example, the poll also revealed that Latinos appeared to have a broader definition of universal health coverage than Congress did: a majority (67%) of Latinos believed that anyone living in the United States should be eligible to buy or receive health care regardless of citizenship status; the ACA, by contrast, restricts coverage to American citizens. One of the most controversial elements of the congressional reform debates was the potential inclusion of the public option, or a government-run health plan that would compete with private insurance. Our survey indicated that a robust 74% of Latinos—a much larger portion than in the general population—supported the inclusion of the public option in health care reform. In summary, the fact that the majority of Latinos supported two elements of reform that did not make it into the ACA—the inclusion of undocumented immigrants in health reform and the public option—could help explain why so many Latinos believed that their interests were not considered during the reform debates.