Many of Us Are Not Like the Others: Country of Origin and Latino Voting Behavior in the United States

Journal article

In the United States, Latinos are often treated as a monolithic voting bloc, but this approach overlooks significant variation in political behavior across sub-groups from different countries of origin. This paper explores the role of country of origin (CoO) in shaping the partisanship and electoral choices of U.S. Latinos, arguing that national origin influences party identification and voting behavior. Using data from the Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), spanning elections from 2008 to 2020, we examine how Latino voters from different countries differ in their partisanship and support for Republican and Democratic candidates. Our findings reveal substantial variation in vote choice and partisan identification based on CoO. We employ genetic matching to control for key covariates, revealing that aggregate country-of-origin differences show up repeatedly in elections over time. These results suggest that aggregating Latinos into a single voting bloc obscures meaningful political diversity and that a country-of-origin approach offers valuable insights into Latino electoral behavior.

Authors: Bromo, F; González, LP; Muñoz, M; Pathakis, KM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics
• Pages: 1-25
• Publication date: 2025-10-06
• Acceptance date: 2025-08-18
• DOI: 10.1017/rep.2025.10025
• EISSN: 2056-6085
• ISSN: 2056-6085
• Language: English
• Keywords: country of origin; vote choice; Partisanship; Latino politics