Deconstructing the 2020 Latino Vote
The political preferences of white working-class voters and soccer moms have been dissected in detail—and now strategists are applying the same level of focus to Latino voters. Photograph by Wilfredo Lee / AP
In the wake of the 2018 midterms, Stephanie Valencia, the co-founder of the research firm Equis, convened a gathering of progressive Latino leaders known as the Latinati. The idea was for people who had either spearheaded movements or multimillion-dollar political campaigns to bluntly share views about how to expand the community’s influence. “Some had protested outside the White House, others had worked inside,” Valencia, who is thirty-eight and served in senior roles during Barack Obama’s two terms in office, told me. “I think that, to effectively build power for our community, we have to be able to talk to one another.” The 2018 midterms had yielded mixed results: turnout among Latinos, who accounted for nearly thirteen per cent of eligible voters, had been exceptionally high, but it hadn’t always favored Democrats. The Latinati were turning their attention to the 2020 general election, in which thirty-two million Latinos would be eligible to vote, becoming the largest minority voting group for the first time in American history.