The predictions about Harris County Latinos becoming more engaged in the recent mid-term primary were right: The number of Latino voters who cast their ballot more than doubled compared to the previous primary of the same kind, in 2014, with an overwhelming majority voting in the Democratic election. Experts attribute the increase to factors such as the national political climate polarized by the immigration discussion and a high number of Latino candidates, among others.
According to the office of Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, 36,184 Spanish-surnamed voters voted in the 2018 primary election compared to 13,721 in 2014.
The increase in turnout –which is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in a particular election– also doubled: 491,912 Spanish-surnamed voters were registered in the county as of February, which means the turnout was close to 7.4 percent, compared to the 370,293 Spanish-surnamed voters who were registered in the county in 2014, which means the turnout that year was 3.7 percent.
The break down by party was also significant.
In 2014, 53 percent of Latino voters participated in the Republican primary and 47 percent voted in the Democratic election, while this year 70 percent of that segment of the electorate took part in the Democratic primary and 30 percent voted in the GOP election.
Let’s break this down a little more, since this jumble of totals and percentages and whatnot muddles what it is we’re actually comparing.
Year LatinoR LatinoD All R All D LatinoR% LatinoD%
============================================================
2014 7,272 6,449 139,703 53,788 5.21% 11.90%
2018 10,855 25,329 156,387 167,982 6.94% 15.08%
“LatinoR” and “LatinoD” represents the number of voters with Latino surnames who voted in the respective primaries for the given year, with those numbers derived from the percentages given. The percentages are the share of Latino voters in that primary.
Growth
===============
LatinoR 49.3%
NonLatR 9.9%
All R 11.9%
LatinoD 292.8%
NonLatD 200.7%
All D 211.2%
“Growth” is the percentage increase of the group in question for the R or D primary from 2014 to 2018. The number of Latino Republicans increased by 49.3% from 2014 to 2018, the number of all other Republicans increased by 9.9%, and so on.
I’m presenting this all just for the sake of clarity. I don’t care to draw any conclusions because I don’t think we have enough data. Especially on the Democratic side, there was so much growth from 2014 to 2018 that it’s basically a waste of time to look at subgroups, because there’s growth everywhere. (OK, “waste of time” is an overstatement. If Latino participation had grown at a smaller rate than non-Latino participation, that would have been genuinely interesting.) A big part of the reason for this is that the turnout in the 2014 primary was so low. We won’t know for years if this is a new baseline or just a blip. As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t make any guesses about November based on what happened in March. There’s value in knowing the numbers. Beyond that, be very careful about making broad statements.
Come November the turnout will be even higher for Spanish surname persons. The main reason is the Russian puppet that seats in the White House, all those Latino candidates don’t mean a darn, most voters (I don’t mean Spanish surname voters only, all voters) have no idea who is running. They just know that Trump is the enemy that wants to deport (or make life miserable) anyone that is not white.