--Latino immigrants have always voted Democrat

MM: When you talk about the diversity within the Latino community, the most significant political diversity is generational, not country of origin. Very typically, immigrants vote overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party, more than 70 percent. This was the foundation for the demographics-as-destiny argument that Democrats have pursued. They saw the change in California in the 1980s and early 1990s, and The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira came out in 2002 and made the argument that Latinos will always be ethnically focused voters. There was some reason to believe that. Latinos were behaving that way because they were under attack. But that was a long time ago. Put it this way: 45 percent of Latinos weren’t even alive when Prop. 187 [which banned most state services for non-citizens] was passed. Latino voters of the next 30 years are going to look entirely different than Latino voters of the last thirty years. The fastest growing group is now third-generation Latino voters, and they are much more economically pocketbook-driven than focused on an ethnic lens. Overwhelmingly, they identify as “typical American,” according to Pew Research. They’re emerging as a fast assimilating group, becoming more and more economic and class voters and less racially and ethnically oriented. Fifty percent of all new U.S. voters since 2020 are Latino, and 80 percent of them are U.S.-born.