Thread by @magi_jay

These data are interesting and should be studied by Dems, w/ Latino politicians, academics, etc. taking the lead. I am not going to opine on why I think these shifts occurred, given I do not belong to one of the aforementioned groups. I will make a few other comments

https://twitter.com/emilymbadger/status/1341035521506746368

1st, the visualizations are of shifts. Biden still won many of the areas in the article by a lot. The shift scale is from 10-30%. The shifts indicate changes in proportion from '16-'20. There's no way to tell if we're talking about primarily new voters, swing voters, or a mix

So, a few comments: after the election, based on the data I saw at the time, I said it was possible that the new Democratic weakness w/ Latinos was perhaps overstated by the media & very regionally specific (mostly S. FL). I think that was clearly incorrect.

Moving on: In general, I hear a lot of people--including many on the progressive left--make a general claim that Democrats need to do a better job reaching out to Latino voters. I agree that this is clearly the case, largely b/c I believe it is the right thing to do

However, whereas plenty feel free to say more outreach is needed, few elaborate on what that outreach should entail.

Many non-Latino commentators seem to imply that the most important issue to *all* Latinos is immigration, which is simply not true. Others imply that the solution is to move more left on economic issues, which I do not see as especially supported by data showing a right-swing.

This is not to say that *I* do not believe immigration reform is a moral imperative, nor is it to say that I believe it’s not of crucial importance to many Latino Americans.

I am only saying that non-Latino commentators need to stop speaking about immigration reform as if it is the primary method of locking down Latino voters. And, of course, as always, we need to stop treating Latino voters as monolithic, a related issue

So, it is of moral and electoral importance for us to examine what “reaching out” looks like, while acknowledging that this outreach cannot be monolithic, as the communities we are talking about are ideologically diverse & likely vote differently based on age, gender, region, etc

It should also be noted that Latino voters turned out in *very large numbers* for Dems and surely helped us swing both AZ & GA. It’s also true that, though our performance was good, our proportional margins did go down, either through voter choice change (2016-2020) or new voters

That being said, I will also note that in political convos we can hyper-focus on minority demos who vote somewhat differently than we expect. This can impart too much rhetorical focus on a small fraction of minority voters, rather than the much larger group of white voters

It’s good to talk about data. It’s good to talk about how to better reach certain demos, esp those who are underserved or discriminated against by our society. It’s bad to let these conversations give way to narratives that lack nuance & could be harmful to these same demos.

Another small point: Harry Enten recently did a write-up on Latino shifts and noted that at least some of what we are seeing might be an incumbency effect.

I won't argue for one explanation or another. I will say that sometimes the explanations are more mundane than we believe.

Also, in terms of the mundane: Trump's people did more on the ground work than we did. This could be another reason for some of the shifts.

I can see the harmful narrative setting has already begun. These takes lack empirical and logical justification, in addition to being pernicious. Some people were bound to use these data to argue 1. Latino voters like Trump & therefore 2. Trump's racism is overstated

The shifts are interesting and, as I said, should be examined, but Trump was *beaten* by a coalition that included the majority of Latino voters. And even if this were not the case, it would have no bearing on the *objective* fact that Trump is racist.