LIKE THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS in the 1980s and the Soccer Moms in the 1990s, the most sought after vote bloc in the coming decade will be what you might call the Latin Swing--upwardly mobile Latino voters who are not the loyal Democrats many people assume they are. Latinos have grown from 2 percent of all voters in the 1980 presidential election to 7 percent of all voters in 2000. In 2004, this number is expected to grow to 9 or 10 percent. Thus Latinos will be on a par for the first time with African Americans as a share of the national electorate. This might be construed as unalloyed good news for Democrats, who still receive a solid majority of Latino votes nationally. But it is not a bloc Democrats can take for granted, as we saw this past November 6. Michael Bloomberg's victory as mayor of New York was made possible by his splitting the Latino vote with Democrat Mark Green. Exit polls showed he received about half of the Latino vote. Certainly he was helped by the internal battling between Latino leaders and the Green campaign. But there were similar squabbles between the Green campaign and African-American officials, and Bloomberg received only 22 percent of African-American votes. Orlando Sanchez, a Republican city councilman in Houston, is in a very tight runoff with incumbent Houston mayor Lee Brown, primarily owing to his strong support from Latinos. While Sanchez is Cuban American, the 60 percent of the Latino vote he won in the first round of voting is almost exclusively non-Cuban. Again, while Brown, who is African American, received overwhelming support among African-American voters, the Latino voters showed that party labels are not nearly as important to their voting behavior. Sanchez stands an excellent chance of winning the December 1 runoff, but it will depend primarily on turnout among Latino voters. While Democratic candidates by and large have maintained their overwhelming lead among African-American voters, Republicans have managed to increase their share of Latino voters over the years. In the early 1980s, the average support for Republicans among Latino voters was 18 to 20 percent. In the 2000 elections, that figure had risen to 25 to 30 percent. Nationally, President Bush received 35 percent of the Latino vote. Why the difference between African Americans and Latinos in party loyalty? For one thing, African-American voters have a much higher proportion who see themselves as liberal than Latinos do. This explains why Latino voters have always voted slightly more Republican than African Americans. But the main reason is that as Latinos rise on the economic ladder their voting behavior becomes less reliably Democratic. The exit poll data for the 2000 election are quite revealing on this point. Latino voters with incomes under $30,000 voted 31 percent for President Bush; Latinos with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 voted 37 percent for Bush; and Latinos with incomes above $75,000 voted 46 percent for Bush. As Latinos rise economically they begin to split their votes more between the two parties. This is exactly what happened in the early 20th century with the economic rise of European immigrant groups in America. The growth of the Latino population has been dramatic in certain key Electoral College states. Latinos have grown in their traditional strongholds of Texas (29 percent of the voting age population), California (28 percent), New Mexico (39 percent), and Arizona (21 percent). But they are also becoming a sizable percentage of the voting age population in states such as Illinois (11 percent), Georgia (5 percent), North Carolina (4 percent), and Oregon (6.5 percent). Nevada has seen its Latino voting age population grow from 9 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2000. This growth has mainly been in Clark County (Las Vegas), where potential Latino voters have gone from 1 in 10 in 1990 to 1 out of 5 today. Because of this growth, Nevada is no longer a reliably Republican state and will likely be a swing state in 2004. The closeness of the 2000 election in Florida was foreshadowed by the non-Cuban Latino population growth in the central Florida areas of Tampa Bay and Orlando. In 1988, when former President Bush won Florida by more than 20 points, 2 out of every 3 Latinos in the state were of Cuban descent, a solid Republican bloc. In 2000, 2 out of 3 Latinos in Florida were non-Cuban. This fact alone moved Florida into the swing column in 2000. So why has Texas not followed the example of California in becoming more Democratic as its Latino population grows? A big part of the reason is that Texas voters, across ethnic lines, are more conservative than California voters. A further factor may be lingering hostility among Latinos in California towards former Republican governor Pete Wilson. The success or failure of potential Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan, who had tremendous success among Latino voters as mayor of Los Angeles, may show whether the "Wilson effect" has been exorcised. But an important and neglected difference between the two states is that nearly 45 percent of Latino voters in California live in union households, while in Texas that figure is only 6 percent. Union households are overwhelmingly Democratic. This helps explain how President Bush was able to get 43 percent of the Latino vote in Texas and only 29 percent in California. Unfortunately for Republicans, the same California pattern of union membership among Latinos holds true in Nevada and Florida as well. All of these factors point to the Latin Swing being instrumental in coming elections. In 2002, Latin Swing voters could decide statewide races in Texas, California, Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Because the Latino vote continues to grow as a share of the electorate, Republicans will need to maintain their upward trend with Latino voters. Otherwise, Latino population growth will simply be a recipe for Democratic gains. The emergence for the first time of a minority group as a key bloc of swing voters will force candidates of both parties to become more sophisticated and less patronizing in their outreach efforts. It will force the media as well to become better sociologists. For instance, Latinos are often assumed to be monolithically Catholic, when in fact the fastest growing religious group among Latinos is Protestants. Further, immigration is often assumed by the media to be the top concern of Latinos, when in fact the top issues are presently fighting terrorism, education, and the economy. Political consultants, too, will have to retool to deal with the Latin Swing. Consultants can no longer do a paint-by-numbers ad buy on Spanish-language TV or radio, when Latin Swing voters turn out to be watching primarily English language television. After the last few elections, American politics has come to seem static and predictable. The emergence of the Latino middle class, or Latin Swing, as a key political bloc is about to change that. Matthew Dowd is a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee. He was director of polling and media planning for the Bush-Cheney campaign. December 3, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 12