Shift in Latino vote may lead to GOP gains in midterm elections
MIAMI - The midterm election is just days away and if Democrats lose ground in Congress, they may learn something from the political shift in Florida where Latino voters have moved firmly to the right.
Florida Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has a cautionary tale for her party. Elected to the U.S. House in 2018, she lost her seat two years later, when her majority Latino community took a hard turn to the right.
"It was a combination of factors but misinformation absolutely was part of the reason," she said.
Mucarsel-Powell pointed to a GOP-financed campaign that spread fears that Democrats would bring the policies of socialist countries that many Latinos fled.
A recent poll shows Democrats holding a 27-point advantage with Hispanic voters nationally, but it's a sharp drop from nearly 40-points in 2018.
In Miami-Dade, long considered a Democratic stronghold, Latinos here account for 69 percent of the population. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the county by 30 points. In 2020, President Joe Biden won by just 7.
Republican media strategist Giancarlo Sopo is part of that change.
"The Democratic party is clearly moving in a left wing direction, whether it's on economics or social-cultural issues and most Hispanics are common sense, middle of the road voters with, I would say, traditional or conservative values. We don't want anything to do with that," he said.
Sopo said that's why Governor Ron DeSantis is on track to win the Latino vote in his re-election bid, which would make him the first Republican in a generation to do so.
"People are just fed up with the democrats, they've taken our communities for granted," said Sopo.
While Democrats are hanging on in states like Arizona, the GOP may have Latino voters to thank for some gains this election day.