Partisan Change with Generational Turnover: Latino Party Identification from 1989-2022

Narratives and studies of Latino partisanship often emphasize Democratic identification, but some have recently suggested a shift towards Republicans. We address these by examining Latino party identification over a 33-year period, leveraging 35 publicly-available national surveys with a total of over 99,000 Latino respondents along with Census data to create post-stratified survey weights to correct for biases. We emphasize changing partisanship over time by nativity, birth cohorts, and by national origin. From 1990 to 2012, we observe an overall increase in Democratic identification and decrease in Republican identification, but this is driven by foreign-born Latinos. After 2012, we see greater Republican identification among older native-born Latinos and immigrants, and accelerating independent identification among Millennial and Gen Z Latinos. These results show that generational turnover and differences by nativity challenge extant theories of Latino partisan change over time.