Back in December, our Douglas Andrews talked about Hispanic voters being split equally between Democrats and Republicans based on a Wall Street Journal poll. There’s been some movement. The most recent poll, the Journal reported on Friday, states that “by 9 percentage points, Hispanic voters … said they would back a Republican candidate for Congress over a Democrat.”

Stunning. That’s quite a giant leap from where they polled less than six months ago. Why the big shift? There are several reasons.

In his piece, Andrews outlines how, in general, Hispanic culture values family, ingenuity, hard work, and social conservatism. He points out that these values are more consistent with the Republican Party lines. The Democrat Party is being steered by the most radical of social activists. Unpopular reforms such as “defund the police,” “Latinx,” and the LGBTQ+ agenda being pushed in schools are starting to act like political poison excising the Hispanic vote.

In a compelling interview between leftist Bill Maher and conservative Ben Shapiro, Maher in particular had some interesting takeaways concerning this shift. He describes why Democrats keep getting it wrong about the Hispanic vote. According to Maher, Hispanics assimilate quickly and are not keen on illegal immigration. They don’t want their jobs taken from them by someone who is willing to work for less. He believes that the influx at the border is a grave miscalculation on the Democrats’ part. “The Hispanic vote is starting to look a lot like what happened with the Italian vote,” he said. “If the Democrats lose that, they are in a lot of trouble. Because that’s a rising demographic as far as numbers.”

Shapiro, for his part, pointed out that “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race. Hispanics from Cuba are going to vote differently than Hispanics from Mexico. This is an important distinction because voters fleeing authoritarian and/or communist regimes like Cuba are going to be more inclined to vote Republican. The Democrats, especially under Joe Biden, are careening toward the precipice of socialism and authoritarianism, and they know from experience how that story ends.

Hispanics, like all Americans, are concerned with voter integrity, especially where it concerns voter ID. A Rasmussen poll explained that “while some have claimed voter ID laws discriminate against racial minorities, majorities of every racial group — 76% of whites, 60% of black voters, and 78% of other minorities — agree that requiring photo ID to vote is a reasonable measure to protect the integrity of elections.” This finding is contrary to the insistence of the Democrats that voter ID is a racist concept.

Then there is the demonization that Hispanics are beginning to face. Like all races and ethnicities, Hispanics have their political extremists. Recently in the news is Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, who was charged with conspiracy associated with the January 6 riots. You also have George Zimmerman (who is of Peruvian descent), who shot Trayvon Martin and was dubbed a “white Hispanic” man to fit the narrative that Martin was killed by a white man with racist motives. Hispanics are increasingly being labeled as right-wing extremists or dubbed “white nationalists” regardless of truth.

It again goes back to the leftist idea that if a minority votes the “wrong way” (i.e. Republican), it’s because they are really “white” or otherwise racist.

Hispanics who are citizens are Americans. Like any patriotic American, they have a vested interest in seeing that this country doesn’t descend into chaos. Right now, the weak leadership and the radical woke ideology under the current presidential command is doing just that. If the Wall Street Journal poll is accurate, it’s another indication of just how out of touch and off the rails the current administration is.