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ABSTRACT
As Latinos settle in new locations across the U.S., Republican members of Congress (MCs) are increasingly faced with adapting their behavior to incorporate this ideologically variant group. I argue that Republican MCs adapt to changing district demographics through vigilant assessment of the makeup (percent Latino) and preferences (white racial threat attitudes) of their reelection constituency. Using data from 1971 to 2015, I demonstrate that Republican MCs roll-call behavior is increasingly conservative until the district Latino population reaches 37%, where they begin to incorporate Latino interests and reduce their extreme conservative fervor. Between 30-35% Latinos, Republican MCs exhibit the lowest level of dyadic district congruence, illustrating that they are cross-pressured by conservative whites and liberal Latinos within this range. These findings suggest that Republican members of Congress are already adapting to the growing Latino population in their districts in an unexpected manner and will only incorporate Latinos when electorally necessary.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Latino voters made up 7% of the U.S. electorate in 2000 and rose to 13% by 2018 (Igielnik and Budiman Citation2020). The Latino share of the voting population nearly doubled since 2000 and accounted for 39% of the overall increase in U.S. eligible voters since then.
2 Indeed, a chi-square test comparing the ideological positioning of Latino Republicans versus non-Latino white Republicans in the CMPS 2020 reveals that even when partisan alignment exists, statistically significant ideological variance remains. These results are discussed further below.
3 While Democrats certainly may have ideological varience between Latino and non-Latino partisans as well, there is a large body of research to suggest that Latinos may have greater ideological variance when compared to Republicans than Democrats. While Democratic members of Congress may still have to adapt to incorporate Latinos into their electoral base, there is usually a closer alignment between Latino partisanship and ideology and the Democratic platform. Much of this research stems from the widely accepted association between national origin group and partisanship among Latinos- that is the propensity of certain national origin groups to identify with a particular party. With regard to Latino Republicans, the most notable example is Cuban Americans who historically identify with the Republican party at higher rates than many other national origin groups. In addition, the assumption here is bound closely to the time period under investigation where the proportion of Latino partisans has remained relatively stable. Indeed across the U.S. states, roughly one-third of Latinos identify as Republican. The difficulty is estimating their highly variable strength in each district given that, with a few exceptions, almost all U.S. States do not collect racial and ethnic data alongside voter registration.
4 Though the metrics used to determine battleground status vary widely, most are based in part on Presidential election returns. Relying on the simple indicator for competitive elections (marginal vote shares), since 2000, Florida’s Presidential vote margins have fallen in the traditional range of a marginal election (less than 5% spread in vote share). Between 2000 and 2020, the marginal vote share between the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates has ranged from a low of .9 to a high of 5. Likewise, Arizona has been characterized by marginal Presidential election returns since 2012. Florida has seen small gains in Republicanism in recent elections since the Presidential election of 2016. Moreover Florida and South Texas lie in contrast to most states with large Latino populations as they account for the largest blocs of Latino Republicans in the country. In Florida, this can largely be explained by the predominance of Cuban country of origin.
5 Meaning district population changes that are not the result of the constitutionally mandated redistricting and apportionment processes.
6 Though outside the empirical scope of this study, the role of media cannot be overlooked in advertising the ideological positions taken by members of Congress on behalf of their constituency. If the positions taken are congruent with constituency preferences, then members of Congress are likely to be rewarded electorally (Mayhew Citation1974). On the other hand, if members of Congress are taking positions outside the preferences of their constituency, the media plays a vigilant role in advertising these positions to constituents. Moreover, there is evidence that the media itself might activate racial fears when they report on the changing demographics of a locale (Outten et al. Citation2018; Craig and Richeson Citation2014).
7 Racial threat generally stands in contrast to contact theory which posits that proximity could also produce greater cooperation and understanding (see, for example Allport, Clark, and Pettigrew Citation1954). While contact theorists have outlined multiple specific conditions under which increased contact might lead to cooperation and understanding, the necessary conditions, I argue, are unmet in the case of Congressional districts where the overt electoral nature of districts presuppose a zero-sum environment.
8 Research has suggested that Economic racial threat may be particularly important in the relationship between Latinos and African American interactions (See, for example, McClain et al Citation2007and Gay Citation2006). The present research is limited to model the incorporation of Latinos into majority-white districts due to the focus on Republican districts. Future research is required to give the Black-Latino dynamic the attention is requires.
9 The term “primary reelection constituency” used here refers to the term coined by Richard Fenno (Citation1977) in his seminal work on Homestyle. It is meant to refer to the portion of a MC’s geographic constituency that is made up of his/her most active and loyal supporters and not the electoral primary system.
10 The Almanac of American politics utilizes multiple federal sources to compile their data including ACS, Census, and FEC data.
11 Federal legislation includes: the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the 1990 Immigration act which expanded immigration provisions in the 1965 Immigration Act, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Act, the 2002 Enhanced Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, and finally, the 2005 Real ID Act.
12 I acknowledge, that by construction, DW-Nominate scores are linear trending over time and have no natural meaning which could call into question conclusions drawn based on the results of the measure. To verify the validity of the measure in this context, the results presented in this paper have been replicated with Party Unity Scores in lieu of DW-Nominate Scores. Party Unity models demonstrate the same results with regard to the focal independent variables. I opt to present the results in terms of DW-Nominate as they are a standard measure of ideology and ideological polarization in the Congressional literature.
13 Introduced in 1997, The Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) is another method of gauging district partisan lean. However, it does not cover the entire period under study (1971-2013). Therefore, I opted to use the Democratic Presidential Vote share in each district to account for partisan lean.
14 This measure accounts for elected party leaders and does not include extended party leaders such as members of party committees and those involved with the whip system. Though there is evidence that extend party leaders also become more partisan in their behaviors over time (see, for example, the work of Scott Meinke on extended leadership), the present study is concerned with the effects of easily identifiable party leaders and is thus outside the scope of this paper.