Why Latinos are the most misunderstood voters in California

Thirty years ago, Californians passed a ballot measure that catalyzed a generation of Latino voters. Proposition 187 aimed to deny virtually all public services to undocumented immigrants and their children. Written largely in response to the transformative demographic shift occurring in California at the time, the measure triggered a seismic shift in racial politics and galvanized Latino activists, some of whom would end up holding the most powerful political offices in the state. . The plight of undocumented and recent immigrants became an indelible part of the political narrative of a generation of Latinos and their leaders.

Something extraordinary and unprecedented happened in 1994, the year of the Proposition 187 campaign. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos voted against the measure as a bloc of parties, genders, generations and national origins. They coalesced into an ethnic political coalition built on the narrative of the immigrant and undocumented experience.

However, as Latino politicians accumulated power and numbers in the following decades, a curious phenomenon emerged: Latino voter turnout began to fall dramatically. To this day, Latinos vote at a lower rate than any other race or ethnicity in California.

At the same time, nearly all high-quality surveys of Latino voters identified jobs and the economy as their top concerns. Latinos disproportionately suffer from California's economic challenges, from housing affordability to high poverty and educational barriers. And they have been clamoring for an ambitious economic agenda from Sacramento, especially its growing number of Latino politicians. And yet, no campaign or party has developed a working-class economic agenda to respond to Latino concerns.

Instead, Latinos are still widely misunderstood as an aggrieved racial minority motivated by immigration, farmworker, and border issues. This is one of the most striking blind spots in American politics: The country's fastest emerging group of voters is measurably telling political leaders what they need and want to hear, and yet both parties persist in belief that they understand Latinos better than they do. They understand themselves.

The fastest growth in Latino turnout is occurring among third- and fourth-generation voters born in the United States. And even in California, the latest evidence shows that the catalyzing immigration policies of the last century no longer resonate in this century. The voting behavior of Latinos is experiencing a generational change.

California political data expert Paul Mitchell recently noted in Capitol Weekly that in Los Angeles County, which is home to more Latinos than any other county in the country, the share of foreign-born registered voters had plummeted from 55% to less than 9% during the last two decades. This is an extraordinary transformation of the Latino electorate. Furthermore, nearly 40% of Latino voters were not even alive during the formative political events of the Proposition 187 era.

California has long been the great Latino exception. For one thing, immigrants make up a larger proportion of California's population than any other state: our 10.4 million immigrants represent 27% of California's population and 23% of those born abroad nationwide.

Despite this rich immigrant fabric, however, California Latinos are overwhelmingly American-born and increasingly so. California wasn't exhibiting the measurable rightward shift of Latino voters that was evident in other states until recently, but it is now. It's simply been harder to watch because of the large number of older immigrants and left-wing voters in the state.

Economic frustration could be a key reason for the change. A recent study reported that only 9% of Latino households could afford the median price of a home in the state. Fifty-five percent of California families in the bottom 10% of income are Latino or Black. By virtually every economic measure, in a state with more Latino elected officials than most, Latinos are not doing well.

Housing affordability and other economic issues are moving Latinos away from their traditional pattern of supporting Democrats in large numbers, to the point that even the Golden State is no longer an outlier. California Target Book's Robb Korinke (a partner at my firm, GrassrootsLab) found measurable changes in Latino voter registration, moving away from Democrats in each of California's competitive congressional districts since the midterm elections. At the same time, the performance gap between Republicans and Democrats in Latino-dense state legislative districts has narrowed considerably.

Are we witnessing a transformation of the Latino vote? Registration, participation and other data clearly point in that direction. It is time for policymakers, many of whom grew up with the narrative that defined the end of the last century, to recognize that we are on the verge of a new Latino political identity in a new Latino century.

Mike Madrid is a political consultant and author of the upcoming book “The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority is Changing Democracy,” of which he was adapted.