All together now: Good grief!

The other day I shared my frustration with readers, after enduring another elite newsroom story about the “shocking” trends among Hispanic voters in the 2020 elections. It turned out that quite a few Hispanics didn’t vote for Democrats the way that they were supposed to and it wasn’t just Cubans in Miami.

Of course there were economic issues involved. Of course there were efforts to paint Democrats as “socialists” or worse, using labels that really scare lots of voters in conservative Hispanic households (including Cubans, of course).

Of course, there are “religion ghosts” lurking in many of those memories of life in the old country.

Anyway, I wrote a post with this headline: “One more time — Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?” I noted that GetReligion has been running posts on this topic ever since the 2016 campaign in Florida, when there was evidence that evangelical Latinos helped make Donald Trump a winner there. As I said earlier this week:

There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando. Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties. …
Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough.

That post was about a New York Times political-desk story that was completely tone deaf to the religion angles in this important topic.

Now, low and behold, that Times team has gone and done it again — this time looking at Miami and its powerful Cuban community, in particular. The double-decker headline states:

How Hispanic Voters Swung Miami Right
Many expected that liberal young Hispanic voters would propel a Democratic wave. But Miami, a city where Hispanics hold the levers of power, confounded expectations.

It was more of the same, of course.

It was one of those statistics that, on the night of the 2016 election, jumped out of the haze of shock and fear on the major networks.

No one who has lived in South Florida was all that surprised that National Election Pool numbers showed Donald Trump winning slightly more than half of Florida’s Cuban voters. However, I was stunned that — after all of his rhetoric on immigration issues — he was backed by 35% of the Latino voters in that life-or-death swing state. Yes, that’s lower, as the Pew Research Center team noted, than Mitt Romney’s 39% of the 2012 vote. But it was still stunning.

Then I watched as some commentators noted that Trump was running stronger than expected in the Interstate highway corridors in and around Orlando. If you follow religion in Florida, that’s prime megachurch territory — including churches packed with Latino evangelicals and Pentecostal believers.

I thought to myself: Did Latino evangelicals and Pentecostal Christians put Trump in the White House? In a race that close, that had to be a factor in Trump getting 35% of Florida’s Latino votes. And Trump had to have Florida.

Every since then, I have been watching to see if mainstream newsrooms would connect the dots between the growth of Latino evangelical churches and this trend’s potential impact in state and national elections. Now we have a few headlines to consider.

If you want a political-desk story that is mostly tone deaf on matters of religion, then check out the recent Washington Post piece with this paint-by-numbers headline: “Despite Trump’s actions against immigrants, these Latino voters want four more years.”

Instead of lingering there, I would point GetReligion readers to the New York Times piece that ran under this expansive double-decker headline:

Latino, Evangelical and Politically Homeless
Hispanic evangelicals identify as religious first and foremost. That’s why, despite his harsh rhetoric on immigration, many back President Trump.

This is one of those stories in which people of one congregation are allowed to speak for various groups inside a larger flock. The most important thing is that readers get to hear from believers who do not fit into the cookie-cutter world of America’s major political parties. It’s a must-read piece.