Determinants of Hispanic Political Preferences

Abstract

Political parties and preferences play a crucial role in many democratic countries in establishing political futures of such countries and their ability to adhere to the needs of their citizens. There has been a belief that people join certain political parties and vote in specific patterns, primarily due to their rational reasoning. However, developing research confirms that such political preferences are highly influenced by numerous factors, both personal and external. Education, citizenship, level of income, race, age, and gender, among other factors, are thought to influence political preferences significantly. However, most of these factors remain unexplained and statistically untested. As a way of finding solutions to the untested variables, this study focus on statistically testing the level of relationship between three independent variables, including citizenship, educational level, and income, and Latinos’ political preferences. A retrospective quantitative research design was adopted in the collection and analysis of research data relating to the four variables. Data were extracted from the Pew Research Report on the 2018 Survey of Latinos and analyzed using the SPSS software to attain both descriptive and inferential statistics. Results confirm that three independent variables, including citizenship, level of education, and incomes, strongly significantly influence Latinos’ political preferences (p<0.05 in all cases). It is concluded that most Latinos’ are affiliated to the Democratic Party with the rate of affiliation highly influenced by the increasing citizenship, academic achievements, and household incomes.

Keywords: Political Preference, Latinos/Hispanics, affiliation, education, citizenship, income

Determinants of Hispanic Political Preferences

Introduction

Political parties, campaigns, and elections have been part and parcel of every democratic nation since time immemorial. As part of any democratic political system, every citizen that has attained a voting age have an absolute right to make political preferences and vote for their preferred candidates without fear or intimidation. Various researchers have attempted to establish factors that influence voters’ political preferences and why people support and vote for specific political candidates. So far, research has shown that such factors highly depend on various socioeconomic characteristics such as race, gender, class, and age. This research objectively focuses on factors that determine electoral behaviours among the Hispanics as a race. The Hispanic political landscape has been shifting for the last few years, primarily influenced by the need to adopt a party that has concern for the Latinos.

According to a report by Pew Research Center (2019), Hispanics take the lead as the fastest-growing population in the United States, having increased by about 43% between 2012 and 2018. The compounding population of Hispanics makes them the majority among the minority groups in the country and the leading edge of demographic change.  Only 35 million Hispanics were living in the United States in 2000 (Pew Research Center, 2019). By 2017, the number had hit 58.8 million. The increasing population also precipitates into the growing participation of Latinos in the US politics. In 2002, 14.5% of Hispanics living in the US were eligible voters (Pew Research Center, 2019). The percentage had doubled to 29.1% by 2018, indicating that they are gaining more power to influence the country’s politics as well as future elections (Pew Research Center, 2019). Such an argument is also supported by the fact that more US-born Latinos are getting more educated and fluent in English than the previous generations, which indeed facilitates their political activeness. Reports also show that more than 60% of Hispanic voters are affiliated to the Democratic Party, while less than 24% are affiliated to the Republican Party (Pew Research Center, 2019).

What, therefore, informs such political preferences? Gawronski, Galdi, and Arcuri (2014) show that there is a strong correlation exists between having an affiliation to a political party and political opinions. They show that people who have connections or perceive themselves as members of a specific political party tend to embrace that party’s norms, preferences, and political biases. As such, there political behaviors and attitudes are highly influenced by the party in which they belong. Such an argument is also supported by McNamara (2019). He holds that voters are usually not in control of their preferences and do not necessary cast their votes on rational decisions but are instead influenced by various political and non-political matters. For (Huet-Vaughn, Robbett, & Spitzer, 2019), individual political preferences does not only emanate from the need for better education, healthcare and economy but is also subtly influenced by a politician’s ethnicity, personality, attractiveness, as well as political history.

For Fisman, Jakiela, and Kariv (2017), rarely are standard voting practices or political preferences in general base on self-interest. Instead, they are influenced by distributional preferences on a grand scale. The concept of distributional preferences centers political debates on the distribution of income and equality-efficiency tradeoffs. For instance, while Republicans advocate for lower taxes and reduced government control, Democrats believe in higher taxes as a way to offset government transfers and services. The concept explains why most minority groups in the US, which are motivated by the need for better government transfers and services, including Latinos, have an affiliation with the Democratic Party. Levy and Razin (2015) show that political preferences highly depend on information sources and the ability of individuals to discern such information. According to the argument, people who are more educated and well informed about social and political waves are more likely to make better political preferences and decisions that the less informed. The analyzed research findings and arguments support that in one way or another, people adopt parties and make political preferences that they believe takes there concern into consideration.

The reviewed literature confirms that political preferences depend on numerous factors. This research aims at finding answers to three specific research questions. First, how do individual incomes influence Latinos’ political preferences? Second, how does education influence Latinos’ political preferences? Third, how does citizenship influence Latinos’ political preferences? The null hypothesis of this study is that income, education, and citizenship have no significant influence on Latinos’ political preferences. The alternative hypothesis is that the three independent variables significantly influence Latinos’ political preferences.

Methods

The quantitative research design was adopted in an attempt to find answers to the mentioned research questions. The quantitative research began with the collection of primary demographic data from the Pew National Research Center to establish the Latinos’ political trends and depict how their political landscape has been changing. The retrospective quantitative research collected research data from a 2018 Survey of Latinos, which specifically narrowed on the group’s political preferences, opinions, and demographics. Pew Research Center has reported on Latinos for more than a decade. Its 2018 Survey of Latinos adopted a probability sampling approach to select survey participants.

A total of 1,501 Latinos living in the United States were selected to participate in the survey, which was conducted between July 26, 2018, and September 9, 2018 (Pew Research Center, 2019). The survey was conducted through cellular and landline telephone interviews as a way of facilitating data collection flexibility and convenience. The criteria for selection were that the identified participant must be of voting age (18 years or older) with a Latino/Hispanic origin. Both genders who met the selection criterion were welcomed to complete the survey. From the 1,501 participants, 626 (41.7%) were interviewed in Spanish, while 875 (58.3%) were interviewed in English (Pew Research Center, 2019).

The study’s descriptive results prove that the Latinos’ interest in politics is inflating and that numerous factors might be influencing their involvement in politics and the sides they take. Education, citizenship, and household incomes were the most evident factors that are likely to influence the Latinos ‘political preferences. Thus, this study has three independent variables, including education, citizenship, and household income, and one dependent variable (Hispanic political preferences).  Generally, the survey had four questions with each question concerned with finding answers for each variable. The first question was whether the respondents consider themselves as Republicans, Democrats, or Independents in contemporary politics. The question’s target was to establish the political preferences of each interviewed respondent. The second question was whether the respondent was a citizen of the United States at the time of the survey. It aimed at establishing the rate of citizenship among the respondents. The last question was on whether the level of income among the respondents influences their political preferences.

All the data collected by the survey on the four questions were extracted for the benefit of this study. By gathering data on each of the four variables, it would be possible to establish whether there is indeed a significant relationship between each of the three independent variables and Hispanic political preferences. Having gathered all the necessary statistical data, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was then used to conduct a hypothetical inferential test at a significance level of 95% to ascertain the level of relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Inferential methods such as bivariate cross-tabulation and chi-square tests were found useful in the data analysis stage.

Analysis

SPSS software was used to analyze all the data extracted from the 2018 Survey of Latinos with the goal of attaining both descriptive and inferential statistics. Frequency distribution tables were used to present the number of observations that fall under each variable category, while bivariate tables were used to compare observations. The bivariate tables, also known as crosstabs, helped in displaying the distribution of the dependent variable across various categories of the independent variables, thereby exhibiting the level of correlation.

Chi-square tests proved to be of great significance in attaining the inferential statistics. Chi-squares, commonly used together with crosstabs, helps in establishing statistical relationships that may exist between categorical variables by examining patterns of responses in each category. It begins with the null hypothesis. Since the test was done at a significance level of 95%, when Pearson Chi-square value (p-value) is greater than 0.05 (p>0.05), the null hypothesis that each of the three independent variables has no significant influence on Latinos’ political preferences is adopted. When p≤0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected, and the argument that the three independent variables indeed have a significant influence on Latinos’ political preferences is adopted.

Generally, the variables that formed part of the test were either in nominal measurements or ordinal measurements. Citizenship and political preferences adopted nominal measurements  with answers on citizenship, taking a ‘yes-or-no’ form and answers for political preferences being democrat, republican, or independent.’ Data on education and income were ordinal. Responses on the level of education ranged between the lowest possible academic levels completed to the highest level of education completed. Income also ranged from the lowest possible annual income per household to the highest annual income attainable.  All the collected data formed a critical part of the analysis process.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Frequency distribution statistics indicate that 44.3% of the sample, equivalent to 665 respondents, was Democrats while only 13.2%, equivalent to 198 respondents, were Republicans. The remaining 42.5% were either Independents or failed to respond to the question. The values reflect the national statistics where the number of Latinos affiliated to the Democratic Party exceeds the numbers affiliated to the Republican Party by far. The statistics also indicate that 49.4% (742) of the respondents were born in the United States, including Puerto Rico, while the remaining 50.6% (759) were foreign-born. The statistic shows that almost half of the Latinos living in the United States are citizens by birth. Income and education vary significantly. However, the majority of Latinos seem to earn between $10,000 and $150,000 annually and are high school graduates. A significant number also have college and university degrees.

The first bivariate table in the Appendix is a cross-tabulation of political preference versus citizenship. As the table provides, 13.2% of the respondents are citizens of the United States and are affiliated to the Republican Party, while 44.3% of the respondents are affiliated to the Democratic Party. 33.4% independents, while the remaining 9.1% have no party preference, are affiliated to other parties, do not know their political affiliations, or refused to share their political affiliations. 27% of the respondents who are non-citizens are Democrats, while only 3.7% are Republicans. 48.3% of the non-citizen respondents are independents.

The second bivariate table in the Appendix is a crosstab political preference versus income. From the table, 44.8% of Latinos who earn an income ranging between $100,000 and $150,000 consider themselves Democrats while only 19% of the same statistics are Republicans. 40.9% of Latinos who earn $20,000-$30,000 are Democrats while 11.6% are Republicans. 40.9% are independents.

The third bivariate table in the Appendix is a presentation of political preference and education.  The table illustrates that 35.2% of Latinos who are high school graduates are Democrats, while only 11.3% in the same category are Republicans. 43.4% of the respondents consider themselves independents. 37% of Latinos with four years of college or university degrees consider themselves Democrat, compared to 17.5% that consider themselves Republicans. In all the categories, the number of Latinos who are Democrats exceeds the number of Republicans by far. It should be noted that while all the responses (N=1501) were validly used to draw the crosstabs of political preferences vis-à-vis level of education and income, only 759 valid responses were available for drawing a bivariate table for political affiliation versus citizenship. Such unexpected circumstances primarily emanate from missing or incomplete data.

Inferential Statistics

After running chi-square tests to establish the level of relationship between each independent variable and the dependent variable, it was established that the results shown in the bivariate tables were significant at alpha level α=0.05. The fourth table in the Appendix presents the chi-square test to establish the inferential relationship between citizenship and political affiliation among the Latinos. The result indicates a p-value of 0.00, which confirms that there is a strong significant relationship between citizenship and Latinos’ political affiliation. The fifth table, which establishes the inferential relationship between income and political affiliation, establishes that p=0.00 (p<0.05), which indicates a strong relationship between income and Hispanics’ political affiliation.

The sixth table in the Appendix is a Chi-square test result for the relationship between political affiliation and educational level. Again, the inferential analysis provides that p=0.00 (p<0.05) indicating a strong significant relationship between educational level and Hispanics’ political preferences. The results confirm that a significant relationship exists between each of the identified independent variables and Latinos’ political preferences. However, it fails to establish whether there might be some level of relationships between the independent variables themselves.

Discussion

The objective of this study was to establish the determinants of political references among Latinos. Three independent variables, including citizenship, income, and the highest educational level attained, were identified as potential factors that might influence Latinos’ political preferences. Thus, three research questions were developed to help in establishing whether each of the three independent variables significantly influences the Latinos’ preferences for political parties or candidates. The first null hypothesis posited that citizenship does not influence Latinos’ political preference. On the contrary, the results show that citizenship strongly significantly influences Latino’s political preferences. Hispanics with US citizenship tend to be more affiliated with the Democratic Party.

The second null hypothesis postulated that the level of education does not significantly influence Latino’s political affiliation. Contrarily, the results indicate that the level of education attained by Latinos strongly significantly influences their political preferences. Latinos with higher educational achievements tend to identify more with Democratic Party. Lastly, results confirm that Latinos’ household disposable income strongly significantly influences their political preferences. The higher income earned the higher percentage of Latinos that identify as Democrats. Thus, reject all the null hypotheses and adopt the alternatives. The results confirm the initial argument that citizenship, income, and level of education are strong determinants of political affiliations.

Generally, this study shows that the majority of Latinos in the United States find the Democratic Party more attractive and appealing to their concerns. The finding is not surprising as it is consistent with the findings of the 2018 Survey of Latinos as well as the literature reviewed in this study. People from minority groups would always want to associate with a political party that focuses on the redistribution of resources from the more privileged groups to the less privileged in society as a way of attaining equity and equality. Such an objective is best attained by taxing the rich more and redistributing national resources in a manner that favors the minority groups (Huet-Vaughn et al., 2019).

The argument explains why minority groups, especially Latinos, tend to be more affiliated with the Democratic Party. The results imply that given it maintains its status quo, the Democratic Party should expect more support from Latinos in the future. However, this study is limited by its dependence on already collected data and failure to examine Latinos’ political affiliations by age and gender. Future researchers should focus on addressing such limitations and broadening the scope of the study to the national level.

References

Fisman, R., Jakiela, P., & Kariv, S. (2017). Distributional preferences and political behavior. Journal of Public Economics, 155, 1-10. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.08.010

Gawronski, B., Galdi, S., & Arcuri, L. (2014). What can political psychology learn from implicit measures? Empirical evidence and new directions. Political Psychology, 36(1), 1-17. doi:10.1111/pops.12094

Huet-Vaughn, E., Robbett, A., & Spitzer, M. (2019). A taste for taxes: Minimizing distortions using political preferences. Journal of Public Economics, 180, 104055. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104055

Levy, G., & Razin, R. (2015). Correlation neglect, voting behavior, and information aggregation. American Economic Review, 105(4), 1634-1645. doi:10.1257/aer.20140134

McNamara, T. R. (2019). The impact of information on political preferences. AEA Randomized Controlled Trials. doi:10.1257/rct.4404-1.0

Pew Research Center. (2019, February 19). 2018 national survey of Latinos. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/national-survey-of-latinos/