This is How the Democrats Take Back the Senate
Earlier this week, a Quinnipiac University poll reported that the race for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas is too close to call. This report sent analysts on both sides of the aisle into a fury, but there is one fact that seems to have eluded both Democrats and Republicans.
Texas is not a red state. And Texas is not a blue state. At only 43% of the population, white people are the minority in Texas.
Texas is a brown state.
40% of the 25 million people in Texas identify as Latino, to be specific. 13% identify as black and another 4% categorize themselves as Indigenous, Asian, or mixed race. People of color outnumber white people in Texas. By a lot. Latino and black voters are also the 2 most loyal voting blocs in the Democratic Party.
Texas, by all measures, should be one of the deepest blue states in the nation. But it’s not. Brown Texas is currently a red state that is under the authority of one of the most loathed and bigoted Republican Senators in the nation — Ted Cruz.
And this makes absolutely no sense.
Something must be going catastrophically wrong in Texas if white nationalists have a stronghold on electoral politics. Something must be going terribly awry if a candidate running on a platform that highlights the criminalization and deportation of Latinos even stands a chance to win a Senate seat in Texas. And luckily, there is.
There is a gloriously fatal error being made that has served to paint the Roses in Texas red when underneath all the paint and perversion, blue flowers are blooming in the brown soil of the Lone Star State. And this is great news. Why? Because it’s fixable. And easily so.
Just as the key to victory in Alabama was mobilizing the black vote, he key to victory in Texas is mobilizing the brown vote. And just as the Democrats had failed to do so in Alabama, the Democrats are failing to do so in Texas.
Finally admitting to error in Alabama, the Democrats flooded resources and support into community organizations and local Democratic chapters working to get black voters to the polls. The problem is, though, they waited until the last minute to do so.
This combination of resources and (black-led) effort was fortunately just enough to put the Doug Jones ahead of Roy Moore in Alabama, but a last-minute push will not work in Texas. In Alabama, the main obstacle was helping people gain access to the polls. This is also an obstacle in Texas, but an even greater obstacle facing Latino voters is registration. And that deadline comes less than a month before elections day.
According to 2016 US Census Bureau data, the population of registered voters in the United States is approximately 158 million people. 72% of eligible white voters and 65% of black voters are registered, while only 40% of eligible Latino voters are registered to vote. 40%. The same pattern holds true in Texas.
There are several reasons for this, but the 2 most glaring are the fact that registration materials are rarely provided in Spanish and rarely diffused through organizations with ties to Spanish speaking voters. These 2 tactical oversights have led to an arguably Unconstitutional degradation of Spanish speaking American’s right to vote. They have also carved a pathway to victory for Republicans running in Latino dominant states.
Again, this flaw is fatal to the success of the Democratic Party, but it is also easily fixable.
If Latino registration and turnout rates are brought up to the levels of black and white voters, millions of blue ballots will be added to the nation’s elections. Approximately 1 million of these blue ballots would come from Texas alone. But if the Democrats wait until November to secure these ballots in Texas, it will be too late. The race for the Senate will likely be won or lost on the last day to register voters for the 2018 Midterm. In Texas, that date is October 9.
Unfortunately, the Democrats don’t seem to have received the message yet. And a closer look at the Quinnipiac University poll may explain why.
On the whole, Democratic analysts use outdated constructs of the Latino population when performing their calculations. Specifically, repeatedly combine white Latinos with Spanish speaking brown Latinos under one “Hispanic” umbrella, when the voting patterns of these groups could not be more different.
Further complicating this issue is the fact that the surveys used to collect data from Latino voters is only offered through privileged communication channels, and they are only offered in English. Spanish speaking Latinos are rarely even represented in the analysis.
As a result, while English dominant Latino’s represent only 20% of the Latino population, their behaviors are used to describe 100% of the community. The Quinnipiac University poll is no exception.
There is a very limited sample being used to project results. Outreach is not specifically engaged in to reach Latino voters, but rather formulas are used to weight their general population. And the questions are given in English. As a result, the Quinnipiac poll is using data produced by English speaking Latinos to predict that only 51% of all Latinos plan to vote Democrat.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If we take a moment out for common sense, we must acknowledge that the Trump Administration has launched a full white nationalist attack on Latinos. Culturally, he has conflated them with rapists, murderers, and drug peddlers. He has accused them of countless unsubstantiated crimes, he is committing genocide in Puerto Rico and he is poised to deport millions of their family, friends, and community members.
Just as voting is an act of militant self-defense for black people in Alabama, it is also a militant act of self-defense for brown people in Texas.
But we don’t need to rely on common sense alone. The numbers also back this claim up.
In 2016, for example. 95% of Latinos that predominantly spoke Spanish favored Clinton. 95%. If we water that number down by adding bilingual Latinos to the mix, 80% still voted for Clinton. In comparison, 88% of black voters cast blue ballots in 2016 while only 42% of white voters voted Democrat. Texas voting patterns produced similar results.
Brown Latinos vote Democrat. To a fault.
White Latinos, on the other hand, vote like white people. Well, they vote slightly more brown than white voters, but their political behavior falls more into line with their white counterparts than their brown, Spanish speaking abuelos y bisabuelos (grandparents and great-grandparents).
Allowing English speaking white Latinos to represent the Latino community in general and the Latino voting bloc specifically may seem to be little more than an analytical error, but this error has led to devastating consequences, not the least of which is the loss of states like Texas to the Republican party.
Without understanding the differences between English Speaking and Spanish speaking voters, one may walk away thinking there is no reason to try to mobilize the Latino voting bloc if their vote is unpredictable, uninterested, and not worth putting energy into. And in fact, most analysts have. And as such, the Democrats have taken this information and used it to refocus their registration and voter mobilization efforts elsewhere.
This is the fatal error that must be corrected if the Democrats want to win Texas and take back Congress in 2018.
If the Democrats refocus their efforts on registering Spanish speaking voters and getting them to the ballot box on election day, they have the potential to flip not only Texas, but they could potentially mobilize the votes necessary to turn Arizona and Nevada blue as well. Should they also put the lessons learned in Alabama to use in Mississippi, they Democrats also have the potential to steal two more seats from the Republican Party.
And with 5 seats flipped, the tables of Congress will completely turn. In fact, they will be flipped all the way over.
Heading into the November elections, the Democrats are holding on to 23 seats while 26 (including 2 Independent seats) are up for grabs. The Republicans only have 9 races to run. Top political analysts agree that not only will the Democrats fail to take the Senate away from the Republican Party (and the Trump Administration), but they will more than likely lose seats along the way. If the Democrats continue to march forward without providing their largest minority voting blocs with the necessary funding and resources needed to get to the polls, then they will without a doubt usher in another two years of an unchecked and uncontrollable President and his far-right Republican led Congress.
On the other hand, if the Democrats mobilize brown Spanish speaking voters in Texas, Arizona, and Nevada — and they mobilize black voters in Mississippi — they could walk away with 54 Senate seats, full control of the Senate, and an energized electorate that will be ready to continue exercising its electoral strength against the Republican Party.
And that is how the Democrats win the Senate.
To learn more about Dr. GS Potter and the Strategic Institute for Intersectional Policy (SIIP), visit: http://strategycampsite.org/v2/
