The past, present and future of the Republican Latino vote

“I think, in the past, a lot of the immigrants from Mexico or south of our borders, they came to cook and maybe get into construction and they were honest people looking to improve the quality of their lives, now you have people coming across the borders who want to kill us and these borders have to be tightened up,” said OJ Rodriguez from West Covina, California.

Latinos at the RNC say they often get defined by the issue of immigration, but they aren’t just defined by that one issue.

From Press Play:

The Latino vote has been crucial in electing the past few Presidents. But Republican nominee Donald Trump has struggled to make inroads with this demographic, according to recent polls. We’ll talk to some Latino delegates and activists at the convention who support Trump. While they may not agree with calls to build a wall, they insist Latinos are not single issue voters.

Polling has shown Hillary Clinton with a sizable lead over Trump. But there is some nuance to those polls. Bilingual Hispanics strongly support Hillary Clinton, but with English-dominant Hispanics, Clinton and Trump’s poll numbers are closer. So while the Latino vote may lean heavily Democratic in the short run, it remains to be seen what happens in the future as more of these families become integrated into the country in the coming decades.