Americans love their labels. Millennials, baby-boomers, swing voters. In such a big country, it is a useful shorthand to describe cross-sections of society and is often a shortcut that everyone in the country will recognise.
There’s a new one we will all be learning about this election year — Latino power.
Last week in Arizona I met some young Latino voters who were celebrating the Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican day of the dead, a type of Hispanic Halloween. Most had voted already. All told me they had voted for Hillary Clinton. Why, I asked one woman. “Are you kidding me?”, was the response.
In other words, there was only one candidate for Arizonian Latinos to endorse. Remember, 31% of Arizona now identifies itself as Latino.
The real reason was, of course, that they felt insulted and denigrated by Donald Trump. It wasn’t only the fact that he called Mexican illegal immigrants “rapists” that upset the people I spoke to. It was more that he said in the same famous speech: “some may be good people”. That enraged one person so much that he couldn't finish his sentence and waved his hand and walked away.
With the one exception of the unique Cuban minority in southern Florida, Hillary Clinton is winning the Hispanic vote. Nationally the picture is clear: a Washington Post/Univision poll released last week gave her 67 percent of the Hispanic vote to Trump's 19 percent. Trump has fared poorly with America's largest minority voting group, having repeatedly angered Hispanics with disparaging comments about their communities.
Usually this has a limited impact on the general election because Latinos have not traditionally voted in great numbers. Evidence on early voting this year may change that understanding. 40 million people have already voted and we have clear information about who they are.
In Florida, 600,000 Latinos have cast their vote this year. That compares to 260,000 Latinos who voted at this stage in the last election. In North Carolina 38,000 Latinos have voted, compared with 21,000 last time around. In these battleground states, these numbers might be significant.
Nevada is also producing record-breaking Latino voting numbers, so much so that Democratic strategists are saying they will comfortably win the state.
No-one knows the final impact on the polls yet, but it is a factor that is likely to be important.
If Donald Trump loses, his comments on Mexicans will be remembered as one of the great own-goals in Presidential election history. For the last two decades, Republicans have fared well among white voters, but their appeal to minorities and better educated whites has been limited.
When they have had a candidate who appeals to Latinos, in particular, they have done better. Consider George W Bush, who spoke good Spanish, and was elected twice and garnered 44% of the Latino vote on his last outing.
Then consider Donald Trump.
Richard Downes, Washington DC
