How Many Latinos Need to Support Republicans for There to Be Future Conservative Presidents?

(Ferenstein Wire) — White Americans are slowly dwindling into the minority, which poses big problems for Republicans. Democrats’ popularity with minorities has helped them snag the presidency in recent elections. By 2024, Republicans may need to blow past George Bush’s 2004 historic record with Latinos (44 percent) in order to ever have a shot again at another conservative president.

Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-immigration political lobby, FWD.us, designed a delightful interactive map of elections to visualize how Republicans must woo minorities in order to have future conservative presidents. In the map tool, users can come up with their own scenarios of how the GOP can win future presidential elections by selecting different compositions of racial groups voting for Republicans.

It shows, in no uncertain terms, that either Republicans will have to start winning (a lot) more white voters, or will have to make historic inroads with minorities, especially Latinos. The tool shows that in the 2016 election, Republicans will need about 44 percent of the Latino vote, if they can also manage to again get 60 percent of the white vote (as they did in 2012).

But, by 2024, the situation gets a lot hairier — the same demographics will lead to a Democratic landslide. As the first map above shows, Republicans will need to get about 50 percent of the Latino vote, if they maintain a 60 percent white majority. If their Latino numbers fall, they’ll need to get a whopping 64 percent of the white vote.

To be sure, this visualization tool is a transparent attempt at arguing FWD’s pro-immigration stance. FWD.us has been at odds with Republicans, many of whom have been reluctant to embrace the organization’s immigration reform agenda.

On the other hand, the visualization tool is more honest than a typical report, where a lobby keeps all of the data secret. Indeed projections are not as friendly to FWD’s argument as they might hope. White Americans, even in 2024, are still the dominant deciding factor in presidential elections. A swing in a few percentage points for white America completely overwhelms larger swings among minorities.

It may be just as likely that Republicans will become far more popular with white Americans as they would to achieve historic levels of popularity among Latinos. FWD must make the case that one scenario is less likely than the other.

At the very least, FWD’s visualization tool makes it more helpful for everyone having a honest discussion based on the data.

Check out FWD’s map tool here.

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