Does the Latino Vote Matter in the US?

In my Dec. 12 article, I addressed some of the reasons why despite winning more than 2.7 million popular votes, Hillary Clinton lost the presidency of the United States by 74 electoral votes. As you may recall, it is the sum of the electoral votes assigned to each state and not the popular vote that determines the result of the election. You also may recall that it is enough to win a state by one vote and take all of the electoral votes of that state. Therefore, it does not matter that Clinton won the election in California by 3.4 million votes; she could have won by 1 vote to have taken its 55 electoral votes.

Well, in the previous article I explained that American minorities, above all the ethnic, racial and cultural ones, as well as the college-educated ones who tend to vote Democratic, were increasingly converging on a limited number of densely populated states that aspire for greater tolerance and liberty. That is to say, the majority of of Democratic voters are concentrated in a small number of states. Even if this helps to win those few states by large margins, it would put them at a disadvantage in the rest of the country. And since each state counts in the American Electoral College, winning a few states by a large margin is a very bad strategy.

This thesis of concentration of the minorities in a limited number of densely populated states is valid for a significant number of groups in the United States, but in the case of Latinos, it deserves a more nuanced analysis.

Although the argument of the increasing concentration of minorities in small urban areas is valid in the case of the Latino population in states like New York and California, it doesn’t apply to all the other states like Arizona or New Mexico, where other minorities don’t converge. For example, the population of Arizona is 59 percent white, non-Hispanics of German, English, or Irish origin, and 31 percent Latino, while Native Americans make up 4.5 percent of the population. Arizona is not a particularly populous state — only 6.7 million people live there. It also doesn’t enjoy great tolerance and freedom; on the contrary, the Latino population of that state is one of the most besieged in all of the country. A recent law approved by the state legislature authorizes the police to ask the identity of any Latino who looks “suspicious.” Naturally, those Latinos who cannot produce identification can be deported to their country of origin.

So why do they live there? Arizona was part of Mexican territory until 1848 when it was annexed by the United States. Since then, it borders on the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora and is one of the most important migrant crossing points. The same is true of New Mexico and Texas. All were once part of Mexico, and now border that country. So the argument that minorities tend to be congregating in larger, more diverse population centers is only applicable to the case of Mexican Latinos.

The distribution of the Mexican Latino population in those border states, far from being excessive or unnecessary, has been indispensable for Democratic victories. Hillary Clinton won New Mexico by a small 65,000 vote margin, largely thanks to the Hispanic vote. The same happened in Nevada, a state that does not border Mexico but runs between California and Arizona, and so afforded Hillary the minimum number of 27,000 votes. In these states, the Hispanic vote was decisive. The Hispanic vote also was very important in Arizona, although this state remained in the hands of Trump by 91,000 votes.

So, unlike other ethnic, racial or cultural minorities that may be increasingly concentrated in a few densely populated states in search of more tolerance and liberty, the Mexican Latino population continues concentrating itself in those states closer to its native land, and the majority of them and their far-away votes have been central for Democratic victories.