Latinos across America are increasingly voting Republican. Can that happen in California?

California likes to think of itself as a model for the nation, but last week’s election results in key states tell a different story. As far as Latino voters are concerned, California is looking more like an aberration.

While a racially divisive California ballot measure in 1994 predetermined Latino voting patterns for a generation, there is growing evidence that Latino voters in other states do not share the hyper-partisan proclivities of Latino voters in the Golden State.

With the notable exception of Arizona — which once had its own anti-Latino villain in longtime Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — a number of other states are experiencing a measurable movement of Latino voters toward the GOP or, in another important metric, decreased turnout for Democratic candidates.

Last week in Texas, the gains Republicans made in heavily Hispanic precincts in the Rio Grande Valley were further advanced with the victory of John Lujan, a Latino Republican, in a Democratic-held House seat in San Antonio.

Exit polling in Virginia suggested Republican Glenn Youngkin was pulling 37% to 54% of the Hispanic vote, while heavily Hispanic precincts failed to turn out in numbers Democrats needed to hold on to the governorship. In a surprisingly tight race in New Jersey, the Republican candidate for governor appears headed to defeat, but he increased his party’s vote share by an average of 10% in a state where whites are only half the population.

This is not a recent development. Hillary Clinton won 66% of the Latino vote nationally in 2016, a decrease from Obama in 2012 (though she won 75% in California). Joe Biden slipped further to 61% nationally (75% in California). While the Latino vote in California has remained steady — almost calcified in a predictable pattern for decades — it’s fluid and moving away from Democrats nationally.

Texas, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Florida have all seen a movement of Latinos toward the GOP despite the anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican politics of former President Donald Trump and his supporters.

As Democrats increasingly resort to progressive cultural and economic positions that are out of step with white, non-college-educated voters across the country, they are beginning to see the early signs that Latinos are voting like their white, blue-collar peers.

At the moment, California Latino voters are still motivated to vote against candidates who attack their community. Pete Wilson, Donald Trump, John Cox and most recently Larry Elder proved sufficient to motivate Latinos to go to the polls in record numbers.

California Republicans have a decades-long history of attacking Latinos, which has probably insulated Democrats for the time being from the gradual defection of Latino voters that other states are experiencing.

The Democrats winning strategy of simply being “anti-Republican” still works in California, especially when there is a GOP candidate who matches the rhetoric. So deeply ingrained is the anti-Republican sentiment among the majority of California Latinos that even though they expressed significant reservations about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s candidacy in the early spring, Latino voters returned to voting in a predictable partisan fashion.

Why are Latinos across America voting differently from Latinos in California? Without the sustained reinforcement of anti-Latino ballot measures and candidates, Hispanics outside of California are voting more like an aspirational immigrant group than an aggrieved ethnic minority.

According to Pew Research, Latinos are much more likely to identify themselves as “typical Americans” than other minority groups and are acculturating on a trajectory not unlike that of other immigrant groups in the past.

Could the GOP make inroads in California? They would have to be willing to stop bashing Latino immigrants, and it would probably take a generation, but yes.

For now it appears that in this respect, the notion of the nation following California might prove wrong.

This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 5:30 AM.