The difference between genius and stupidity, someone once said, is that genius has its limits.
That’s the message for the Democratic party, which increasingly has adopted the woke left’s usage of the word “Latinx” to replace the gender identifying terms Latino and Latina. A new poll found that 40% of Latino/Latina voters are offended by the term, while only 2% prefer it.
More ominously for Democrats, 30% of voters said they were “less likely to support” a politician or party that calls them “Latinx.” The poll by Bendixen & Amandi International found that more than two-thirds of those surveyed preferred the gender-neutral term, “Hispanic.”
By using a made-up gender-neutral term instead, the Democratic party risks alienating, even outraging, a large bloc of voters who were solidly reliable supporters of Democratic candidates as recently as 2016.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Equis Labs, which studies the Hispanic electorate, found that in 2020, there was a 12-point shift toward President Trump in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas compared to 2016, and in parts of Miami-Dade County in Florida, the shift toward Trump was 20 points. Nationally, there was an 8-point swing toward Trump among Hispanic voters from 2016 to 2020.
The trend also showed up in the Virginia governor’s race, where Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Hispanic vote outright, according to a survey of the electorate by AP VoteCast. Congressional party preference polling likewise shows more Hispanic voters moving toward Republican candidates.
A poll commissioned by the Wall Street Journal found signs of a stunning reversal of fortune for Democrats in presidential politics. In 2020, Joe Biden won 63% support among Hispanic voters, but in a hypothetical rematch in 2024, only 44% of Hispanics said they would vote for Biden, and 43% would support Trump.
There was a gender split, with 56% of Latinos saying they would support Trump, and 55% of Latinas preferring Biden. We could say “male Latinx” and “female Latinx,” but we just can’t stand it anymore.
In 2019, a poll by Pew Research found that 76% of Hispanic adults had never even heard the word “Latinx,” but identity politics requires coercing people to describe themselves and others with the latest approved terms.
— Tribune News Service
