Big Latino Turnout In Midterms Raises Stakes For 2020

Door hangers are stacked after a rally with Jacky Rosen, a Democrat who later won her Senate race, at the Culinary Workers Union Hall Local 226 on Nov. 5 in Las Vegas. Organizations like the Culinary Workers Union made a big push to engage Latinos in 2018

Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Election after election, pundits predict that Latinos will be a powerful voting bloc. And Latino voters consistently underperform those expectations by failing to turn out at the polls in big numbers.

But this year’s midterm results in Nevada, Arizona and other states suggest that Latino turnout is up dramatically — a development that could reshape the electoral landscape for 2020 and beyond.

In Texas, turnout rose dramatically in heavily Latino precincts across the state — from the Rio Grande Valley, to big cities like El Paso and San Antonio.