Wednesday Edition: Why Latinos Are Voting Trump

Using overly academic, left-wing coded words like “Latinx” is not an effective way to win over masses of Latino voters, research suggests. (Fox News)

A new study by Harvard professor Marcel Roman: Researchers reviewed seven studies and found Democratic politicians who use or are linked to the “gender-inclusive” term “Latinx” are less likely to garner the support of Latinos.

• Although conservative Latinos are the main force behind this trend, even LGBT-friendly Hispanics don’t show more support for politicians who embrace “Latinx” language.

Related: According to 2023 Pew Research Center survey, only 4% of U.S. Latinos use “Latinx” to describe their community, and a growing share (75%) of those familiar with the term say it shouldn’t be used to describe Hispanics.

Zoom in: There are big class and generational differences dividing Latinos who are hip to “Latinx.”

• Overall, only 47% have heard of the term.

• But 74% of Latino college graduates, 67% of LGBT Latinos and 60% of Latinos aged 18-29 are familiar with Latinx.

Roman:

Bubba’s Two Cents

Race is becoming less of a dividing line in politics, while factors like gender and, especially, education become more important. Democrats have morphed into the party of the college-educated, but it’s come at a price: it seems like they’ve forgotten how to talk to working class voters. The party’s recent struggles with outreach to Latinos, who are about half as likely as whites to have graduated college, is just one example.

Non-college white Americans, the largest voting bloc in the country, have been struggling over the past four years relative to other groups. (Kevin Drum)

White men without college degrees have seen their inflation-adjusted wages decline 4% since 2019, while wages for their Asian, black and Hispanic counterparts have grown.

White women without college degrees have seen their inflation-adjusted wages grow at a much smaller clip compared to Asian, black and Hispanic women.

Related: In 1980, the income of white men without college degrees was 7% higher than that of the average worker.

• Nowadays, non-college white men’s incomes are more than 10% lower than the average worker’s.

It’s not just about the money: Economic shifts have led to a devaluing of certain kinds of blue-collar work in America in both wages and prestige and status.

New York Times reporter Emily Badger:

Bubba’s Two Cents

The above data underscore the roots of political tension in America. If you believe the fading fortunes of blue-collar communities are just the price of progress, you’re probably aligned very differently than someone who sees it as a crisis demanding change.

1. This week, the “nonpartisan” Marshall Project published a fact-check of more than 12,000 Donald Trump statements on immigration.

2. During the ABC News debate between Trump and Kamala Harris in September, moderators flagged Trump’s statements five times in real-time, while Harris faced no live fact-checks.

3. In February, PolitiFact celebrated its 1,000th fact-check of Trump, which is more fact-checks than for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton combined.

4. The Washington Post fact-checked more than 30,000 Trump statements over the course of his presidency (While the Post’s fact-checking team created a similar database for Biden, it discontinued the project after just 100 days).