How the Latino vote affected the 2020 election

For months, news outlets predicted not only that President Donald Trump would lose the 2020 presidential election but also that Democrats would dominate most of the other political races. After election night, it was clear it wasn't the blowout everyone expected, and the next question was what happened? Was this a flashback to 2016? Although Joe Biden will be the next president, it seems the Democratic Party took the Latino vote for granted this election cycle.

'Latino' voter does not exist

This election cycle, several news outlets talked about the importance of the Latino vote and how each party planned to appeal to the demographic. The Democrats used a universal message to appeal to all Latinos, and this is where they made a fatal mistake.

Latinos are not a monolith; their political perspectives are shaped by country of origin, age, and which part of the United States they live in. The Republican Party understood the complexity of the Latino population and crafted messaging to appeal to each segment. In Florida, the Cuban Americans who populate the state are wary of a radical socialist who would be a Fidel Castro-type leader. In Texas, Mexican Americans are leery to support a candidate who would ban fracking because a lot of them work in the oil and gas industry. Republicans effectively used advertisements that portrayed Biden as a socialist leader who would end the oil and gas industry to siphon Latino voters to their side.