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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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It would be unreasonable to expect anyone to predict a spike of that magnitude, yes.

It's not unreasonable to expect that the Republican share of the Hispanic vote would be broadly commensurate with recent historical trends. The impression I get is that there are a lot of Democrats (perhaps not senior DNC figures, but certainly pundits and ordinary voters) who still can't quite believe how popular Trump is among Hispanics, respond to all the evidence in support of this trend by sticking their fingers in their ears, take the Latin vote for granted, then get continually caught out when a larger and larger share of Hispanics vote Republican each campaign. Every four years, the same chorus of shock and horror: "how could you have voted for him?! Don't you realise he wants to sic ICE on you?!"

It was reasonable for certain Democrats to go into the 2024 presidential election anticipating that 68-64% of Hispanic voters would vote for them, then get blindsided by only 54% of them doing so. A jump of that size is hard to predict.

It was not reasonable for other Democrats to go into the 2024 presidential election expecting only a single-digit percentage of Hispanics to vote for Trump, then get blindsided when nearly half of them did. The idea that only a single-digit percentage of Hispanics would vote for Trump was wishful thinking, wholly unsupported by polling data or voting trends from recent elections. Anyone who believed this ought to have known better.

It was not reasonable for other Democrats to go into the 2024 presidential election expecting only a single-digit percentage of Hispanics to vote for Trump

I guess Im not convinced they thought that. Like if you had that you could basically stop campaigning at all. Hillary at one point did seem to think she had won already, I dont think they did this time.