Hispanic voters were one of President Joe Biden’s biggest weaknesses in the 2020 election. Although sources differ on his exact margin, Biden’s advantage with Hispanics was the worst for a Democratic presidential nominee since 2004 — even as he had the strongest performance overall for a Democrat since 2008.
A look at recent history and polling reveals, however, that Biden may be primed for a comeback among Hispanics for a simple reason: He’s now the incumbent.
Take a look at Gallup polling during the Biden presidency. Aggregating all the polls it has conducted so far (in order to get a large sample size), Biden’s approval rating with Hispanics stands at 72% compared to a 55% overall approval rating.
That 72% is a clear improvement from how Biden did in the election with Hispanics. Biden won 65% of Hispanics, according to the network exit polls. An estimate from the Democratic firm Catalist (which lines up well with what we saw in pre-election polls) had Biden taking 61% of Hispanics. So this Gallup data suggests Biden’s support may be up anywhere from 7 to 11 points from the election.
Biden is doing better overall now than he did in the election. His approval rating is at 55% in the Gallup data we’re using here. Even controlling for a higher approval rating overall, Biden has had a disproportionate rise in support from Hispanics. He’s now doing 17 points better with Hispanics than overall, while he was doing 10 to 14 points better with them in the 2020 election.
Keep in mind, too, that unlike in an election, there are undecideds allowed in a poll. If we allocate undecideds equally between approval and disapproval for both Hispanics and overall, Biden’s approval rating is about 20 points higher with Hispanics than overall in Gallup polling.
(An average of recent CNN/SSRS, Fox News, Marist College and Quinnipiac University polls compared to their pre-election equivalent finds that Biden has had a similar disproportionate rise with Hispanics.)
This 20-point gap between how Hispanics and adults overall feel about Biden is wider than the last Democratic president saw in his first months on the job.
In aggregated Gallup data with undecideds allocated, Barack Obama’s approval rating was 17 points higher with Hispanics than overall in the first four months of his presidency. In the 2008 election, Obama did 14 points better in the exit polls with Hispanics than overall.
Obama saw an improvement with Hispanics relative to his overall performance, but not to the same extent that Biden may be getting.
We’ve discussed the incumbency effect before – David Beard was the first to call it to my attention, and I noted it my State Senate district analysis. As author Harry Enten points out, this effect for Presidents persists for winning and losing incumbents – George H.W. Bush also saw a rise in Latino support from 1988 to 1992, even as his overall vote share dropped tremendously. Obviously things can change, 2024 is a looooooooooong way off, and we don’t know if this effect is more or less uniform geographically and across different nationalities (i.e., Mexicans versus Puerto Ricans versus Cubans versus Dominicans, etc) or if it might be greater in places like California and Colorado versus Texas and Florida, but this is a thing to keep an eye on. It could make a difference in some key states next time around.
It may also have an effect in 2022, to the extent that approval of the President has an effect on the fortunes of the party in power for the off year. Specifically in Texas, where the Trump shift in Latino areas has been talked to death, this could mean that 2020 was an outlier, or at least it could mean that a trend in favor of Republicans for at least some Latino voters will be smaller in magnitude this next election. As noted in my first post about the State House districts, there really is a difference between the level of support Trump got in Latino areas and the level of support other Republicans got. Things did move in the GOP’s direction from 2016 to 2020, but not by nearly as much once you got past the Presidential race. I’ll have those numbers for you soon. One could argue that if the initial shift towards Trump was about jobs and keeping the economy open, that might actually benefit Greg Abbott more than any Democrat, since Abbott was singing from Trump’s playbook. Abbott’s favorability has taken some hits in recent months as we know, but the farther we get from the legislative session the more likely in my opinion that may fade. While this may be a leading indicator of good things for 2024, we just don’t know what effect if any it may have next year. It’s something to consider, but don’t put too much weight on it.