2022 Midterm Elections: What are the key issues and concerns for Latino voters?

Often within US politics, there is an assumption that different demographic groups, perhaps divided along racial, ethnic, gendered, or religious lines, have certain issues that they are more concerned about. This approach to politics may be shifting as concerns over key issues align across racial and ethnic lines.

Latinos, as a voting block, are a diverse group with political allegiances in both major political parties. Pew Research recently conducted various polls on the issues at the front of voters’ minds during this mid-term season and found that across racial and ethnic groups, there just aren’t that wide of disparities.

Source: Pew Research (All voters & Latino voters)

When comparing the issues that all voters ranked as “very important” compared to those ranked by Latino voters, only two items change from list to list. Immigration and climate change made the top ten list for Latino voters, while when looking at the broader group, the fate of US democracy and Supreme Court appointments ranked higher.

However, as a percentage of voters, fifty-four percent of Latino voters said that Supreme court appointments were “very important” to them, which is not far from the fifty-five percent tracked when looking at all voters.

Breaking down opinions on immigration

Similarly, while immigration did not make the top ten list when looking at all voters, fifty-four percent said the issue was “very important,” which happens to be the same rate at which the issue was reported when Latino voters were surveyed.

What is interesting about immigration is that the concerns relating to it tend to change when you look at political leanings. When looking at all voters, far more Republicans (76 percent) reported that immigration was an important issue compared to Democrats (36 percent). Part of this discrepancy could be tied to a difference in the media diet of voters, with more conservative-leaning news outlets raising the issue of border crossings and migration much more than others.

Among Republican Latinos, immigration is still seen as a more important issue (63 percent), but the gap with Democrats (50 percent) is much smaller, meaning that among Latino voters, immigration is, in general, a more consequential issue across the political spectrum.

However, this does not mean that among Latino voters, there aren’t differences of opinion on how political leaders should go about fixing US’ broken immigration system. For instance, Latinos who lean Republican tend to place greater emphasis on “Increasing security along the U.S.-Mexico border to reduce illegal crossings” and “Increasing deportations of immigrants currently in the country illegally.” By comparison, those who tend to support Democrats favor policies like those that allow a path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the US as children.

The difference may come down to other factors...

When looking at the differences in the lists above, it is important to note that rather than ethnicity, political party preference tends to impact the issues many see as important as they cast their ballots. The Kaiser Family Foundation released a poll focused on Black voters and the issues most important to them, and the results are quite similar to those found by Pew:

There are minor differences in the order that Black voters ranked these issues compared to the Pew polls, but overall, the same issues remain at the top of the list: the economy, healthcare, crime, and the protection of voting rights.