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Joe Biden won 65% of the Hispanic vote in the last presidential election. He campaigned on defending the working class and fixing the U.S. immigration system. Two years into his presidency, he has so far failed to do so, and Hispanic voters are increasingly deserting the Democratic Party. With the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, this Washington Examiner series,Taken For Granted, will look at how Biden and Democratic Party policies are failing to connect with the Latino electorate,how Donald Trump and Republicans have benefited, and how it could swing the November midterm elections.

Democrats, and some Republicans, may have exaggerated the centrality of immigration to winning over Hispanic voters.

This, in addition to the failure of Democrats to pass immigration legislation when they've controlled both the White House and Congress, could be a factor in Latinos emerging as a possible swing vote ahead of the midterm elections.

President Joe Biden campaigned on an immigration overhaul and has largely allowed a record migrant surge to continue at the border throughout most of his presidency, even as his job approval rating on the issue tumbled into the 30s in most polls.

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Biden saw his national share of the Hispanic vote decline relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016. In parts of Texas and Florida, the losses were even worse, putting both states out of reach.

According to Civiqs, Bidens job approval rating among Hispanics is 51% improved from the summer and above his overall approval rating but well below his 65% vote share from this demographic in the last presidential race.

Biden and congressional Democrats sought to include immigration reforms in their sprawling reconciliation bill to address lagging support from Latinos. Democrats are under pressure to find an immigration proposal that conforms with Senate budget rules ahead of a midterm election in which the party must motivate Hispanic voters to turn out, is how a report in Bloomberg Government put it.

I bring up every year that were slipping with Latino males who are becoming more and more cynical about the Democratic brand, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-IL), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucuss campaign arm, told the outlet. The only thing they actually favor Democrats for is comprehensive immigration reform.

The Senate parliamentarian ruled these immigration provisions were out of order as part of the partisan budget process. They did not end up in the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act, the scaled-down bill that did finally emerge from reconciliation.

But in 2020, immigration ranked eighth among Hispanic voter concerns, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 50% of Hispanic men rated it as very important to their presidential vote.

Neither are Hispanic views on immigration monolithic. An Axios-Ipsos poll released last month found that 51% of Hispanics believed it was most important to help immigrants escape poverty and violence in their home countries and find success here, compared to 43% who responded in favor of secure U.S. borders and help U.S. citizens.

Hispanic voters were further divided on this issue based on age, national origin, and party affiliation. While 73% of Hispanics from Central America said it was most important to help immigrants, for example, 58% of Cubans chose securing the border and helping U.S. citizens.

One Republican pollster told the Washington Examiner a trend among Hispanic men toward the GOP was first evident in the 2018 midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of the House in a rebuke of former President Donald Trump.

But Republicans have also at times viewed immigration as the primary way to appeal to Hispanic voters. After a disappointing presidential election loss in 2012, the Republican National Committee conducted an autopsy that concluded comprehensive immigration reform, a policy viewed by many conservative voters as amnesty for illegal immigrants, was central to winning over the Hispanic vote.

If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence," the report stated. "It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies."

We were convinced that the Hispanic voters Republicans could attract most easily were those who agreed with White working class Republicans about the need for more immigration enforcement and less annual immigration, writes Jim Robb in his forthcoming book Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move. The RNC autopsy report, on the other hand, had advised trying to appeal to the Hispanic voters whose attitudes were the most different.

President George W. Bush had won upward of 44% of the Hispanic vote in his 2004 reelection bid. He had supported unsuccessful legislative attempts to reform immigration that would have given legal status to a large majority of undocumented immigrants already in the United States. But the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a key leader of those legislative efforts, won just 32% of the Hispanic vote as the GOP presidential nominee in 2008.

Four years later, Mitt Romney won just 27% of the Hispanic vote. Bob Dole took only 21% of Hispanics in the 1996 presidential race. Dole had supported the 1986 immigration amnesty but also the 1994 California ballot initiative Proposition 187, which curtailed taxpayer funds for illegal immigrants.

But Trump marginally improved Romneys Hispanic vote share in 2016, if anything doubling down on a tough immigration enforcement message. Running for reelection, Trump won the highest share of the Hispanic vote of any GOP nominee since Bush in 2004.

Pandemic business closures, defund the police, and the rhetorical embrace of socialism by a subset of progressive Democrats were believed by strategists in both parties to have played a larger role in this swing than immigration. While Democrats could still regain momentum with these voters, as busing of immigrants explodes as a political issue, Republicans are now talking about becoming a multiracial working-class party.

Democrats may also be recalibrating. In his speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala, Biden mentioned the word "immigration" only once and "DREAMers" twice, though he did attack unnamed "Republican officials" for "political stunts" at the border.

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A shock Wall Street Journal poll taken earlier this year showed the two parties virtually tied among Hispanics in the generic congressional ballot and a hypothetical 2024 rematch between Biden and the former president, with most Hispanic men favoring Trump.

Latinos are more and more becoming swing voters. Theyre a swing vote that were going to have to fight for, John Anzalone, the Democratic pollster who worked on the Wall Street Journal survey, told the outlet at the time.

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Immigration might be overrated as key to Hispanic vote - Washington Examiner