The populist GOP’s share of the Latino vote jumped by a third to almost 40 percent, compared to 2018, according to the exit polls.
Eleven percent of the electorate are Latinos, so this 2018 to 2022 shift is a gain of 1 percent nationally. That 1 percent shift is more than enough to decide many close races.
The GOP share of the black vote also jumped sharply from 2018 — but from the very low level of 9 percent up to just 13 percent.
The vote gain is likely enabled by the GOP’s populist stance since Donald Trump pushed aside the establishment wing of the GOP in the 2016 presidential primaries.
The GOP’s strongest showing among Latinos was among married men and women, where 66 percent and 50 percent voted for the GOP.
The GOP also did well among Latinos with skilled vocational training. More than 47 percent of that group backed the GOP. The GOP did worst among Latino women with post-graduate degrees, where less than 31 percent voted for the GOP.
The GOP’s Latino share reportedly jumped in Florida and Nevada, but likely remained low in California.
The overall results suggest that the populist-themed GOP did best among middle-class Latino families who likely worry about wages, inflation, crime, and education amid the Democrats’ policy of admitting millions of wage-cutting poor Latino migrants and their K-12 children.
When asked about immigration, Latino voters split 38 percent for GOP, and 60 percent for Democrats.
The House GOP’s leaders have promised to curb President Joe Biden’s huge inflow of illegal workers, renters, and consumers through the southern border. But many donor-backed GOP candidates spent much of the election trying to minimize the pocketbook impact of immigration, and to instead portray migration as an issue of crime or chaos.
Since 1965, the federal government’s extraction of migrants from poor countries has forced down Americans’ wages.
It has also boosted rents and housing prices, and it has reduced native-born Americans’ clout in local and national elections. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of fields and spiked the number of “Deaths of Despair.”
The black vote has long been a lock for the Democratic Party, despite federal economic policies that disadvantage, sideline, and subordinate American blacks.
In 23018, 90 percent of blacks voted for Democrats, and in 2022, 86 percent of blacks voted for Democrats.
But the GOP’s share of mid-aged blacks jumped last night, according to the poll
Roughly 17 percent of blacks aged 30-44 voted for the GOP. Roughly 13 percent of blacks aged 45-64 voted for the GOP.
Those two groups provide 7 percent of the electorate. Overall, black voters are 11 percent of the electorate and roughly 20 percent of the Democratic vote base.
Black and Latino men were far more likely to vote GOP than black and Latino women.
Seventeen percent of black men voted for the GOP, versus just 10 percent of black women.
Forty-five percent of Latino men voted for the GOP versus just 33 percent of Latino women.
Many polls show the public wants to welcome some immigration. But the polls also show deep and broad public opposition to labor migration and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into the jobs needed by the families of blue-collar and white-collar Americans.
This “Third Rail” opposition is growing, anti-establishment, multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that American citizens owe to one another.