Party political preferences of US Hispanics: The varying impact of religion,social class and demographic factors

The focus of this article is the pattern of party political preferences among the fast‐growing and increasingly politically significant Hispanic population. The source of our data is the 1990 City University of New York CUNY] National Survey of Religious Identification, a nationally representative sample that includes 4,868 Hispanic adult respondents. One unique aspect of our large data set is that for the first time we disaggregate the one‐third who are Protestant and of No Religion from the Roman Catholic majority of Hispanics in order to see how religious identification affects political outlook. We found that Hispanics are most likely to be Democrats: 41 per cent, compared with 27 per cent who identified as Independents and 24 per cent as Republicans. Our research suggests that Hispanics are rapidly adopting mainstream American political characteristics. As a whole, the Hispanic population politically resembles non‐Hispanic white America more closely than it does black America. Among Hispanics, Protestantism and higher income favour the Republicans, and femaleness and older age assist the Democrats. The local political environment and individual social attributes are the determining factors in Hispanic political preferences. In fact, the geographical variable, state of residency, has the strongest effect on Democratic Party preference in the multivariate analysis. Overall, the dynamics of social trends among Hispanics seem to favour the Republican Party.