5 things you should know about Latino voters in North Carolina

Amid all the news media’s focus this election week on vote counts and “big board” maps of red and blue, there were also headlines about the role Latino voters played in the outcomes in Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

“How Miami Cubans disrupted Biden’s path to a Florida win,” read one atop a Politico story. Added another in the Washington Post: “Democrats lose ground with Latino voters in Florida and Texas, underscoring outreach missteps.”

But what about Hispanic voters in battleground North Carolina?

According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, Latino voters in North Carolina cast more ballots for former Vice President Joe Biden than for President Donald Trump. But the same exit polls reported a gender gap — Republican Trump was the winner among Latino men, but lost in a landslide to Democrat Biden among Latino women.

Still, the exit polls also found, Hispanic voters made up only between 5% and 6% of the 2020 electorate in North Carolina, far less than in other states with bigger, older and more established Latino communities.

And yet, Latinos’ political influence in North Carolina is destined to steadily grow, as more and more turn 18 and become eligible to vote.

It’s not a simple story. So here are 5 things you should know about Latino voters in North Carolina

1

Latinos in North Carolina are not a monolithic group.

With Latinos, it’s often about where you and your family are from originally. The U.S. Census Bureau talks about “Hispanic origin” and defines Hispanic as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”

So, just as Hispanics overall are not a monolithic group, neither are Hispanic voters, said Charlotte’s Olma Echeverri, a fomer member of the Democratic National Committee.

“It’s a little complicated because we have young people and not-so-young people who were born here (in the United States) as well as those (born in other countries) who have become naturalized citizens,” said Echeverri, who emigrated from her native Colombia. “And they all bring their experiences of their own country.”

Mecklenburg County, for example, is home to roughly 137,000 Hispanic residents, according to 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. That’s about 13% of the county’s population. (One note: Not all Hispanic voters state their ethnicity on voter registration forms, experts say.) Those from Mexico make up the county’s largest Hispanic population. Data show there are about 53,000 Mexican immigrants living here, followed by roughly 16,000 from Honduras, 13,700 from El Salvador and 12,000 Puerto Ricans, a U.S. territory.

What does that mean politically? For starters, Cubans tend to vote Republican; Mexicans and Puerto Ricans usually support Democrats.

2

N.C. Hispanic voters don’t yet have the political muscle that those in some other states do.

Hispanic registered voters in Mecklenburg County total about 37,400. That’s more than any other county in North Carolina.

Wake County is second with about 29,000.

In all, North Carolina has about 228,000 registered Hispanic voters.

Compare that to Florida, where 3.1 million Latinos are eligible to vote.

And compare it to the total number of registered voters in North Carolina. That number: 7.3 million.

For now, Latinos don’t get as much attention from the political parties as, say, African-Americans, which make up a much larger N.C. community.

Only 27% of Mecklenburg County’s Hispanic residents are registered to vote. Among White residents, it’s 79%; among Blacks, it’s 67%.

“There’s just not as many of us yet,” said Felix Sabates, a Charlotte car dealer who’s a prominent Republican and a Cuban native. “And, compared to the Cubans in Florida, the Cuban population in North Carolina is very small.”

3

But it’s only a matter of time before N.C. Latino voters wield more political influence.

The fastest-growing segment of the Hispanic population in North Carolina is the voting-eligible population — those who are citizens and at least 18 years old.

That’s according to a study by the University of North Carolina’s Carolina Demography.

This voter-eligible Hispanic population grew by 105,514 persons between 2012 and 2017. That’s a 49.4% jump — more than twice the growth (22.1%) of the Latino voter-eligible population nationwide.

Chalk it up to more Latinos becoming citizens, but also to young Latinos hitting their 18th birthday.

“There are a lot of Hispanics who are turning 18 every day. It’s staggering,” said Echeverri.

Sabates even predicted that “there’s going to be a point where there’s more Latinos than African-Americans” in North Carolina. And many of them will vote, he said.

4

Among those N.C. Hispanics now voting, there are many more Democrats than Republicans.

Statewide, the 227,869 registered Hispanic voters are 42% Democrat, 42% unaffiliated and 14% Republican.

The numbers are similar in the state’s two largest counties.

In Mecklenburg, 49% of the 37,382 registered Latino voters are Democrats, 39% are unaffiliated and 11% are Republicans.

Unaffiliated is the most popular designation (44%) for the 28,974 registered Latino voters in Wake. Democrats make up 42% and Republicans, 13%.

Religion can be a factor: Hispanic Catholics have tended to go Democratic, while Hispanic Protestant evangelicals generally favor GOP candidates — including Trump.

The president attracted many non-Republicans among Hispanic voters in the state, too, according to the exit polls.

He lost N.C. Hispanics overall, 59% to 39%. But, the exit polls reported, Latino men in the state went for Trump, 54% to 44%. Latino women favored Biden 73% to 25%, the exit polls found.

Democrat Echeverri’s one-word analysis of the men’s preference for Trump: “Machismo.” Many Latino men, she said, profess that “I like somebody who speaks his mind and not gently. I like a man who has power.”

And Latino women?

“They believe in the bread-and-butter issues,” she said. “’How are we going to pay the rent? How are the kids going to school? The day-to-day concerns.”

5

But Hispanic voting preferences are often shaped by where you were born.

Sabates said North Carolinians who grew up in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua are put off by a word bandied about in political debates this year.

“Socialism.”

Trump’s use of the word to define Biden and other Democrats probably stuck with natives of countries that were led by Communist rulers like Fidel Castro in Cuba and left-wing juntas like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

“That’s why most Cubans are Republicans,” said longtime Republican Sabates. “They lived through that and don’t want that for America.”

He and others saw a Socialist or even Communist future for America in the ideas of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina from New York who represents the left wing of the Democratic Party.

On the other hand, said Democrat Echeverri, many Latinos who came from Mexico consider immigration a top issue and are turned off by the harsh rhetoric and policies from Trump. They prefer Democrats’ promises of a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and for the young “Dreamers” who came to the United States as children.

“Even after (immigrant) children in cages and Trump trying to restrict legal immigration,” she said, “they still believe in the American Dream.”