A must read on the nightstand of every political strategist in the country this week is the new report Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion, published by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Hispanics are one of the fastest growing demographics and many conservatives hoped to capture this segment of the population with appeals on social issues such as abortion. But immigration has become the dominant issue for Hispanic Americans and that provides an opening for more immigrant friendly Democrats.
Right now party affiliation breaks down like this:
Latino evangelicals are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to be Republicans. That is a far greater difference than exists among whites. Moreover, Hispanic conservatives who are Catholic favor the Democrats, while white conservatives consider themselves Republican regardless of religious tradition.
The Democratic Party holds a nearly three-to-one advantage among Latino Catholics who are eligible to vote (48% vs. 17% for Republicans). Because the Latino electorate is overwhelmingly Catholic (63%), Catholics represent the core of Democratic support among Latinos. Indeed, 70% of all Latino eligible voters who identify as Democrats are Catholics. Party identification among Latino evangelicals is more narrowly divided and appears to slightly favor the Republican Party. Among Hispanic eligible voters who are evangelicals, 37% say they consider themselves Republicans and 32% say they are Democrats.
But consider the complexity of issues involved as politicians seek the Hispanic vote:
Gay marriage and abortion
The difference between Hispanic evangelicals and those who adhere to other religious traditions is also reflected in views on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. While the overwhelming majority of Latino evangelicals (86%) oppose legalizing gay marriage, Catholics are more divided. A slight majority of Catholics (52%) say they are against gay marriage, but a significant minority (32%) favors it. Similarly, Latino evangelicals are more than 20 percentage points more likely than Catholics to say that abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances. These differences, to a striking degree, also occur among the general population.
Foreign policy
Hispanics’ views on foreign policy issues also resemble those found in the general population. Latino evangelicals, for instance, are more supportive of the war in Iraq than are other Latinos. Nearly half of evangelicals say that using force against Iraq was the right decision, compared with 31% among seculars and 27% among Catholics. Previous Pew polling reveals similar differences among the population as a whole.
The divide between evangelicals and Catholics on the war in Iraq is even more pronounced among Latinos than it is among the general population, even after controlling for partisanship. Support for the war is 28 percentage points higher among Latinos who are evangelical and Republican than among Catholic Republicans, and 16 percentage points higher among evangelical Democrats than among Catholic Democrats. Hispanic evangelicals, like their white counterparts in the general population, are very supportive of Israel. More than six-in-ten (62%) support Israel over the Palestinians, far more than among Latino Catholics or seculars (27% and 30%, respectively). Indeed, the gap between Hispanic evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics on this question is roughly three times as large as the gap between white evangelicals and white Catholics. These differences may reflect the importance of the fate of the Jewish people for evangelical theology, which foresees a prominent role for Israel — and the Middle East region more broadly — in the events that eventually will accompany the battle of Armageddon and the end of the world.
About one-third of Latinos (34%) say they sympathize with neither Israel nor the Palestinians, while 18% express no opinion on the matter. Evangelicals are less likely than other Latinos to express no opinion on this question or to say they support neither side in the conflict.
Economic issues
Regardless of religious tradition, Latinos take liberal views on economic issues, often in contrast to their conservatism on social issues. More than two-thirds (69%) of Latinos support publicly funded health insurance for all citizens, for instance, even if this results in higher taxes. On this issue, there is virtually no difference between Latino Catholics and evangelicals. By contrast, Catholics in the general population are somewhat more likely than evangelicals to endorse publicly funded health care. Similarly, almost two thirds (64%) of all Hispanics, including similar numbers of Catholics and evangelicals, say they would opt for higher taxes if the result were more government services.
Behind this support is the high level of sympathy Latinos express for the plight of the poor. Nearly two-thirds (64%), including large majorities of Catholics, evangelicals and seculars, agree that poor people have hard lives because government benefits do not go far enough; a substantially smaller majority (52%) of non- Hispanics agree with this statement. Fewer than one-in-three Hispanics, by contrast, say that poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. Differences of opinion on economic issues are not strongly related to nationality. Puerto Ricans express less support than other groups for government-guaranteed health care, and Cubans are less favorable than others toward a large government providing many services. But there are no consistent patterns that suggest nationality leads to consistently more liberal or conservative views on economic issues.
Views on Immigration and Discrimination
Fully two-thirds (66%) of Latinos in the survey say that immigrants strengthen society, while a small but significant minority (23%) takes the opposite view. Catholic and mainline Protestants are in agreement on this question, with more than two-thirds of each saying immigrants strengthen society (67% and 69%, respectively). A somewhat lower proportion of evangelicals (59%) agree with this statement. Conversely, among evangelicals, one-in-three (33%) say immigrants threaten society, the highest number among all the religious traditions. Foreign-born Hispanics are for the most part more positive on this question than the native born. The majority of both the foreign born and the native born see immigrants as strengthening the U.S., but there are significant differences on this issue among Catholics and evangelicals. For example, almost three quarters (72%) of foreign-born Latino Catholics hold a positive view of immigrants, compared with 58% among the native born. Conversely, almost a third (32%) of native born Catholics, almost twice the rate of foreign-born Catholics (17%), say immigrants are a threat to traditional American customs or values.
If the Republicans can gain even a small number of votes from Hispanics by inflaming tensions on social issues it could cost the Democrats a close election.
Regardless of the political implications in all this there is a theological story here: Evangelical Hispanics (conservative political folks who often side with Republicans) still read the Bible and come out as economic liberals who believe society has a paramount responsibility to protect the “least of these” and are willing to use government as a vehicle for doing so. White Southern evangelicals could learn something from their Hispanic counterparts on the meaning of Jesus’ teachings. And white progressive mainliners need to do a better job of building alliances on moral issues such as the fight against poverty and immigration with Hispanic evangelicals and Roman Catholics. There is a great deal we share in common as a people of faith even as there are issues that clearly divide us.
