America’s Shifting Latino Vote: Tectonics Trumps All?

Among the surprise results in this year’s American election: a victorious Donald Trump improving his numbers among Latino voters to a level not seen in 20 years and George W. Bush’s re-election (the only other time this century that the Republican choice won the popular vote).  David Leal, a Hoover Institution adjunct senior fellow and University of Texas-Austin professor of government specializing in American demographic changes, discusses why Latino voters turned Trump’s way, how 2024’s inroad impacts the idea of demography as destiny ( i.e., a growing minority population working to the Democrats’ advantage), plus Texas returning to its redder self despite talk of newcomers from other states making the Lone Star State more competitive.

Recorded on November 20, 2024.

Episode Transcript

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[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:06):
It's Wednesday, November 20th, 2024.
And welcome back to Matters of Policy andPolitics, a Hoover Institution podcast
devoted to governance and balance of powerhere in America and around the world.
I'm Bill Whalen.
I'm the Hoover Institution's
Virginia Hobbs Carpenter DistinguishedPolicy Fellow in Journalism.
I'm not the only Hoover Fellowwho's podcasting these days.
I recommend you go to our website,which is hoover.org, tap on the top of

(00:27):
the homepage link that says Commentary,then head over to Multimedia.
And up there, you'll see an optionthat says Audio Podcast, and
you'll see at least a dozen ormore Hoover podcasts.
We cover the waterfront, everything frompolicy and politics to economics, history,
you name it, we got it.
My guest today on thispodcast is David Leal.
David is a senior fellow adjunctat the Hoover Institution and
a professor of government at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, Hook ' Horns.

(00:50):
His primary academicinterest is Latino politics.
His research exploring the political and
policy implications of demographicchange in the United States.
Given the results of this month'selection here in the United States,
including some eye raising returnsin David's home state of Texas,
it seemed like an apt time forProfessor Leal to explain the evolving
presence of Latino votein American politics.
David, thanks for joining us today.

>> David Leal (01:10):
Thank you.
Good to be here.

>> Bill Whalen (01:12):
And it's good to see you too, my friend.
So question for you.
Here we are in the sort of immediateaftermath of the election.
It's been a couple of weeks now, and
you're starting to kindof process what happened.
You're an academic, you're a researcher,you're a numbers guy.
Where do you turn to for information?

>> David Leal (01:27):
Well, the initial data are going to be the exit polls at the national
level and at selected states.
These aren't perfect data points,but no survey is.
Every survey of any kind always representschoices by the surveyors about who to
sample, where to sample, when to sample.
And so you'll hear data points will emergefrom academic surveys over time, but
by that point, by the time the academicsget around to it, you know,

(01:50):
the political world has moved on.
And so the exit polls,the AP VoteCast, but
also the ADP are the main ways that we'relooking at the election results right now.
And I think there's really no denying thatnot only did the Republicans have a good
year, but they had a reallygood year among Latino voters.
The Latino electorate has reallybeen moving toward the GOP, and

(02:10):
my work has been documentingthat since 2016.
It's potentially a realignment inAmerican politics, but it's also,
other people have takenanother perspective on it.
And that's part ofthe post election debate,
is that everybody is not justanalyzing but also spinning.
And so people are talking about how theelection reflects exactly what they had

(02:31):
always been predicting all along and whatthey also want to be true going forward.
So you have Democrats saying itwas just an inflation election,
it'll all go back to normal,quote, unquote.
You have other people who are saying,well, you know, if you look
at certain parts of the electorate, and myown work looking at Latinos suggests that,
you know, I'm sure inflation had somerole, but I also see Latinos moving to

(02:51):
the middle in all sorts of social andeconomic and political ways.
And so I don't think this is justa temporary phenomenon that the Democrats
are gonna go back to their two to one orthree to one vote margin anytime soon.
It's really heading more toward possiblylike a 50, 50 kind of alignment.

>> Bill Whalen (03:06):
Yeah, and that's what I was looking at too.
I always look at the spin coming out ofthe losing side of the election to see if
they try to sell it as a one off.
This is not gonna happen again,this is just a function of a bad economy.
Is it just a function of running againstkind of a unicorn in the form of
Donald Trump?
Or those Democrats who say, no, we havesome serious institutional problems ahead.

>> David Leal (03:24):
That's right, yeah.
And soyou can see all sorts of spins out there.
But if you look from 2016,when Donald Trump did about as well
as Mitt Romney did,that was a moment of dispute.
There were pollsters who were saying no,
that Donald Trump had really gotteninto the teens for the Latino vote.
But I think that our work,looking at 16 and then 18, 20, 22,

(03:46):
24, you see a variety of patterns that arehappening that you haven't seen before.
First of all, you see a consistent rise.
You don't see like a dramatic rise of 10percentage points or 20 percentage points.
Whenever people talk about the Latinovote, they always use these
scary geological metaphors like waves andtsunamis and earthquakes.
But my metaphor has always beenmore like plate tectonics,

(04:08):
maybe like the slow but steady change ina population is what really matters here.
And so as Latinos have been slowly and
steadily moving toward the GOPacross elections in presidential and
midterm elections, and they haven't beengoing back like they did in the past.
If you look at Reagan's Latino vote, ifyou look at George W Bush's Latino vote,
they did really well.
It didn't transfer to other candidates,congressional candidates,

(04:30):
subsequent presidential candidates.
In fact, there were drop offs.
You're not seeing that now.
You're seeing the Latino vote, it stayedabout the same, as I said, for Romney.
And then it went up inthe midterm elections, and
there was debate about that.
And then in 2020, it continued to go up,and in the next midterm election.
So this kind of aggregation has takenthe Latino population from about like,

(04:52):
you know, maybe like, you know, mid tohigh 20s up to maybe mid-40s right now.
And so no one year did that.
But this is really adding up and
I'm not quite sure what the argumentwould be that it's going to go down.

>> Bill Whalen (05:07):
I wanna talk about some of the numbers, David, but first,
a housekeeping matter.
Can you explain the differencebetween Latino and Hispanic?
Because you see the two words interchangea lot in journalism, the Latino vote,
the Hispanic vote.
Is there something geographicallyimportant here or is this more nuanced?
For example, Mexican voters of Mexicandescent, Central American descent,
Cuban descent, they sometimes haddecidedly different opinions when it comes

(05:30):
to candidates and causes.

>> David Leal (05:32):
Yeah, there is a kind of like name game, so to speak, out there,
in journalism, in academia.
So there are people who will argue thatHispanic and Latino mean different things.
That Latino means all of Latin America orLatin American descent.
That Hispanic somehow refers more toSpanish language country descent.
I don't think that people reallydifferentiate in this kind of way.

(05:54):
I think these are kind of elite, quoteunquote, kind of like discussions that
have really very little to do with howeveryday people identify themselves.
Surveys show that most people prefertheir national origin identifier,
Mexican American, Cuban American,Venezuelan American.
And after that, a lot of peoplewould just use a name like American.

(06:14):
The idea that people are usingwords like Hispanic or
Latino andthinking deeply about their difference.
And of course, we have these newwords too, like Latinx or Latine, and
there's debate abouthow to pronounce them.
And this has been used asan example of how academia and
progressive politics is out to lunchwhen it comes to Latino voters.
Almost none of whom who haven't been toa PhD program use words like Latinx or

(06:37):
Latine to describe themselves.
It's very much a progressive kind of take.
And I think that if you were toask Latinos and as surveyors have,
you'll find that these names just don'treally mean much, these differences.

>> Bill Whalen (06:52):
Okay, so numbers for you, David.
According to NBC News exit polls,
Donald Trump received 45% ofLatino vote in this election.
Other polls have it at 42%.
In 2020, exit polls had thembetween about 32 and 35%.
In 2016, per the National Election Poolexit poll, Trump was at 28%.
As you mentioned, this dovetailswith Mitt Romney who was at 27%,

(07:16):
John McCain, 31% in 2008.
As we go further the wayback machine,David, 2004,
the last time a Republican presidentialcandidate won the popular vote.
George W Bush,your former governor of Texas,
was in the low mid-40s,according to exit polls.
The Roper Center, forexample, had him 44%.
So when we look at this, David, is we gofrom 44% in 2004 to maybe 45% in 2024.

(07:41):
Nothing has changed in the last 20 years,or has it?

>> David Leal (07:44):
Well, I would say that it's not entirely clear what Bush got in 2004.
My sense,I did some post-election analyses,
and there were other people whoreanalyzed the exit poll data.
He probably got about 40%, I'm thinking,if you look at sort of other surveys,
if If you look at county level data, he'sprobably in the 40% range, which was still

(08:04):
a record because we think the previousrecord was Reagan with about 35% in 1984.
But if you look at after,what came after Bush in 2004,
you really had a serious decline inthe Latino vote for Republican candidates.
His support didn't carry overinto the 2006 midterm election,
it didn't carry over intosubsequent presidential candidates.

(08:26):
It seemed to be a blip that reallydidn't have a lot of impact.
It was a personal vote as opposed toa party partisanship, because after all,
George W Bush, he had a lot ofconnections with the state of Texas.
He had really positive relationshipswith Latino communities.
He was talking aboutBig Ten conservatism and so
there was a lot of support forhim among Latino voters.

(08:47):
But it seemed to be a bit of a one offbecause it didn't translate in subsequent
elections.
What we're seeing herewith Trump in 2016 and
afterwards is it does seem to be muchmore of like a partisan movement.
It's not a one off support fora candidate.

>> Bill Whalen (09:00):
Right, but the last thing, David,
you would associate with Donald Trump isthe phrase compassionate conservatism.

>> David Leal (09:06):
Well, I think that what do Latinos actually want?
I think that there's a lot of talk about,assumptions about what Latino voters
are actually looking for and I think that,compassion is probably a good thing.
And maybe for a lot of Latinos,conservatism is also a good thing.
But I think we have to understand Latinosnot in the sense of we're trying to find

(09:27):
a Latino-specific explanation.
I think that the way to understand Latinosis a population that's a similariting,
that's moving to the mainstream.
And if you look at all the research overthe last 20 years or so, you'll see that
across all these indicators,Latinos in economic life, in social life,
whether we're looking about jobs,whether we're looking at intermarriage,
there's a whole variety of statistics herethat show Latinos moving to the middle.

(09:49):
So why shouldn't we assume that they'realso moving to the middle when it comes to
politics?
Why would we think that a populationthat's assimilating in lots of ways,
and I know lots of people onthe progressive side don't like
the idea that Latinos are assimilating.
And some people on the conservative side,I don't believe that it's been happening,
but I think the Factshave been pretty clear.
I actually have a term for this,the Latino assimilation paradox,

(10:11):
which is that the assimilationthat conservatives have been in,
many conservatives have been denying foryears, is not only happening, but
it's also advantaging theirparty over the Democrats.
And the Democrats have notbeen in favor of assimilation.
They tend to like minority groups to keeptheir characteristics and maybe to keep
voting Democratic, possibly over time,but it's really actually happening.
And it is an example of what academics,to use trendy jargon, might call agency,

(10:34):
which is people making up their own minds,given the circumstances around them,
making up their own decisions.
And I think Latinos are moving to the GOPbecause they're moving to the middle and
they're responding to a lot of the samepolitical context that everybody else is.

>> Bill Whalen (10:49):
But you put this, David, in the context of not just Latino voters,
but also Asian American voters and AfricanAmerican voters, because we saw Trump make
gains among black voters, but still histake on the black vote is very small,
not as dramatic compared to Latino vote.
And then you have Asian voters, forexample, Vietnamese voters, Texas and
California, for example,they tend to come into the country, and
at least in California,they tend to vote more conservatively,

(11:10):
at least when they're right off the boat,there's not.
In other words, we don't talk aboutassimilation with them as much as we do
with Latino voters, it seems.

>> David Leal (11:17):
Yeah, there have been,
there's certainly a lot of rumors we mightcall them about Latinos and assimilation.
I've had lots of people tell me, Latinosdon't assimilate and things like that.
And so for some reason, this kind of ideaof, of Latinos as more left than they are,
as even possibly socialists, as peoplewho don't assimilate, I hear this being
said one way or the other on bothsides of the political spectrum, and

(11:40):
neither of them seem to reallyunderstand what's going on.
I don't know as muchabout other populations,
I feel less confident speaking about them.
Certainly Asian American votershave changed a lot since the 1980s,
when they were very muchon the pro Republican side.
But as you mentioned,
it was also a population that wasdifferent than what it is right now.
There's been really substantial,

(12:01):
substantial immigration from Asia over thelast 20 years, and that's really changed.
It's not the same voterscomparing 1984 to 2024.
It's a very differentkind of population group.
And so, yes, I think that with immigrants,with Asian Americans,
with African Americans,we're seeing a general movement,
although it's the Latinopopulation that is the largest.

(12:22):
It's the Latino population that hasbeen the focus because of its really
strong population growth.
And when you look atthe projections out down the road,
that's the population that's not onlygoing to grow in the overall population,
but also in the electorate, too.
And so Democrats have been reallycounting on this group to,
to stay Democratic, andit just doesn't seem to be happening.

(12:44):
The other gains that Trump has made iscertainly helpful because parties aren't
trying to win any group.
Parties are trying tocreate a winning coalition.
They're trying to just winmore voters in Pennsylvania or
Michigan than the other side.
They're not necessarily tryingto win a majority of any group.
And so when you put all ofthese kinds of trends together,
this pretty clear movementof Latinos to the GOP,

(13:05):
along with some of the general immigrantmovement to conservative politics,
along with some, you know, limited, butsome African American movement, you know,
a lot of Republicans have to be prettyhappy about what they're seeing.
Even if I think if they were being honest,they wouldn't admit that they had really
predicted this, that they didn'tthink that this was going to happen.
But demographic change is turning outto be not such a bad thing for them.

(13:26):
And so maybe this will change the tuneof some aspects of the Republican Party,
some aspects of conservative politics,when they realize that,
diversification is,it might actually be good.

>> Bill Whalen (13:37):
David, is the Latino vote similar to the white vote in this
regarding Trump, in that we seean education divide within the vote?

>> David Leal (13:46):
Yeah, you do see, you see gender divides,
you see a lot of similar things thatyou see in the general population.
So there is like a class dividethat's beginning to happen.
You see religion as one ofthe most important determinants.
And that goes all the way back toGeorge W Bush's vote in the early 2000s,
that Latino Protestants, usually,
we're not talking about the Episcopalianchurch, we're talking about Pentecostal,

(14:10):
evangelical, small congregations,often conservative.
They vote very strongly Republican and
this was a group that we saw in the datagoing all the way back 20-plus years.
But these other kinds of differences,concern about the economy,
that's consistent, too.
The Latino issue agenda,the kind of things that Latinos care about

(14:32):
are actually very similar to whatthe overall population cares about.
When you ask people about what's the mostimportant problem in the country,
they'll give you the same kind of issues.
The economy, inflation, jobs, education,it's a similar kind of agenda.
So I think a lot of scholars, a lot ofjournalists have been trying to find

(14:54):
differences, but I think the emergingstory in all kinds of dimensions is
really a similarity between Latinovoters and white voters, right?

>> Bill Whalen (15:03):
Well put.
Is it safe to say, David, that educated,college-educated Latino voters would be
more receptive to the fascist argumentthat Conal Harris put forward,
whereas the non-college-educated Latinovoters maybe turn off afascism and they're
a little more driven toward economicissues because they would be hit harder?
Let's assume they're low, they don'tmake as much money as their college

(15:24):
counterparts, so they're hit harder whenit comes to inflation and cost of living.

>> David Leal (15:28):
I think that's a reasonable hypothesis,
I haven't seen specific data on that,but it makes perfect sense.
I think that I don't know if the Americanpublic really sort of knows and
American politicians really know howto deal with the inflation issues,
since we haven't reallyhad it in a long time.
You and I will remember the 70s,we'll remember stagflation and malaise and
whip inflation now.
And we'll remember the Simpsons hadan episode where they said, Jimmy Carter,

(15:52):
history's greatest monster,leaves forever.
And so there's a little bit of culturalmemory of the 70s and inflation, but
not very much of it and.
And soI think we have these intersecting trends.
We have a Latino populationthat is assimilating and
moving to the mainstreamin all kinds of ways.
But then you also have inflation and costof living, which I think accentuates some
of this movement andhelps to explain some of the change.

(16:15):
But I think this change has beenclearly going on in any case for
multiple election cycles.
So inflation,I think is part of the story, but
I really don't think that itexplains the whole story.
And college educated Latinos,
I don't think we really know verymuch about some of these differences.
I think we're gonna probably, ideally, theLatino politics scholarship will be more
interested in these kinds of questions.

(16:36):
I feel like sometimes the scholarshiphas not really been asking the kind of
questions that we need to ask.
It doesn't have the informationthat we need to know,
especially when it comes to Latinos andconservatism and the Republican vote.

>> Bill Whalen (16:48):
It might also be a question, David,
when future generations of Latino voterscome along, because then you would have
had the educational climb and more ofa college presence within that block.
But David,
do you remember a ballot initiativein California called Proposition 8?

>> David Leal (17:01):
Which one was that?

>> Bill Whalen (17:03):
We have a lot of them in California, so.

>> David Leal (17:05):
I know, I know.

>> Bill Whalen (17:06):
Apologies for broadsided like that.
Proposition 8 was a ballot measure, David,was defense of marriage in California.
This was after Gavin Newsom hadhanded out marriage licenses, and
it became a court issue as to whether or
not same-sex marriage would belegally recognized in California.
So, conservative group got together andput a measure on the ballot that simply
said marriage in California isstrictly between a man and a woman.

(17:26):
And thus began a fierce ballotargument in California.
A big fight.
The left came out in strong forceto defeat it, and they lost.
It passed.
And it passed in part, David, because theopponents of Prop 8 made a miscalculation.
They didn't realize that the blackcommunity in California had issues with
same-sex marriage.
In other words, they didn't understandkind of the cultural striations of

(17:48):
the black existence in California.
I mention this, David,because I look at the campaign.
Kamala Harris obviously ran very strongon the democracy fascism argument.
Also, abortion was front and center in thecampaign, and that's my question to you.
How does abortion playamong Latino voters?
Because on the one hand,
you might have progressive mindedvoters who believe in a woman's right.
On the other hand, you haveCatholicism and social conservatism.

>> David Leal (18:12):
Yeah.
When you look at the Latino attitudestoward what's the most important question,
I think some people have thought that youmust have Latino specific issues that
matter the most.
And those would be eitherlike maybe immigration or
bilingual education traditionally,or maybe abortion.
Because Latinos do havethis cultural conservatism.
Many, not all, but many, but it seemsto be like a fairly low priority issue.

(18:34):
If you look at the issue agenda,it's never been really.
None of those issues havereally been up at the top.
Immigration has been, butonly when it is for everybody else.
And so it's not as if Latinosare going to the polls and
thinking about those kinds of issues.
It's the traditional kind of topicsthat are being talked about in any
given election cycle.
So the Latino issue agendadoesn't really change.
I think that there is likea kind of cultural conservatism.

(18:55):
I think the way to understand the Latinoelectorate is that it's much more like
a New Deal electorate.
It's not a progressive electorate, notin the sense of like coastal Democratic
elites who sort of think about politics.
Latinos aren't really in that kindof a political or ideological space.
I feel like some people have talkedabout Latinos as like a bread and
butter constituency.

(19:16):
I think New Deal constituency kind ofcaptures it because it also captures
how things change later on.
So who was in the New Deal coalition?
Lots of the ethnic Catholic voters,Italian Americans, Polish Americans,
Irish Americans.
You had this group of people whowere voting on economic issues,
voting on practicality.
Herbert Hoover had the unfortunatesituation of being

(19:37):
president when the Great Depression hit.
It's probably not a good idea to do that.
I'm sure he regrets it, butit's a parallel because over time, sure,
you had this economic event, a lot ofpeople voted Democratic, but over time.
Of course, they moved,they moved to the mainstream.
And now,we don't even think about ethnic politics.
We don't even talk aboutthe Italian-American vote, and

(19:58):
we hear hardly even talk aboutthe Catholic vote anymore.
These things that used to be so
incredibly central to Americanpolitics have all just dissipated.
And it's possible that Latino politicswill also over time dissipate into a kind
of mainstream politics.
Just like the New Dealvoters also disappeared.
So I don't think that it was asfar as the Harris strategy goes.

(20:19):
I don't know if those are the kindsof issues that Democrats, Latinos,
were really sort of prioritizing.
It seemed to be more about the economy.
And it's not clear what they really had tosay about that to assuage Latino concerns.

>> Bill Whalen (20:29):
Right now, I was gonna ask you if the needle moves with Latino voters
when you bring up issues like pronouns.
Because the narrative of this election isone of the most effective Trump ads was
the one that said, what she's for,they them, Trump is for you.
Do Latino voters care about that issue?
Do they care about controversiesover transgender bathrooms?
Do they care about biological menplaying women's sports and so forth?

(20:50):
Or again, are they more boggeddown in economic issues right now?

>> David Leal (20:54):
I mean, my sense is that culture war issues are the media like
them, politicians like them.
I don't know how much peoplereally care about them.
I saw a Pew survey ofissues they asked about.
I think it was 20 or 21 issues,and trans came last.
It was either 20th or 21st.
I don't know if culturewars change culture.
You know, I don't know if people actuallyare interested in these kinds of things

(21:16):
when you have a real cost of livingsituation for lots of people.
I do think that the Democrats didn't quitesort of fully understand the cost of
living kind of issue, the inflation issue.
You know, maybe when you're like a sortof coastal elite, maybe it does,
if the price of goods goes up,maybe that's annoying.
But it doesn't quite have the samesort of hit that it does when

(21:37):
you're more in the working class,when you're on a budget, limited income.
I don't know if Democrats really hadeither sort of like a full awareness of
how much this issue mattered, orif they thought there was just.
Maybe they had focus groups that saidthere really just wasn't much they
could do with it,
because it was the economy stupid to takethat Clinton campaign quote from 92.
And so they tried to focus on democracy,they tried to focus on other things,

(21:59):
but that really wasn'tenough to move the needle.
In many ways, this campaign reminded me of92, again, something that we'll remember.
A lot of people thought the economywas weak, but at the same time,
you had The Bush administration.
The H.W Bush saying, well,we're not in a technical recession, and
if you look at this data point orthat data point, things aren't so bad.
It's kind of hard to tell peoplethey're wrong in politics.

(22:20):
I think the Biden administrationtried to make the argument that, hey,
unemployment is low and things are goingpretty well in lots of places.
But when people feel likethey're being squeezed,
that isn't a very effective response.
It wasn't effective for H.W Bush, andit wasn't effective for Biden or Harris.

>> Bill Whalen (22:36):
And I worked on that campaign, David.
Thank you forbringing up that trauma for me.
[LAUGH] I'm joking, actually.
Working on presidentialcampaigns is a great experience.
People should, if they like politics,you try it once.
But no, you raise an important point.
What's the saying in politics whenyou're explaining you're losing.
And if you are trying to tell a voterthat things are okay because look at
these GDP numbers, andthey're going to the grocery store, and

(22:56):
they're upset because there's an $8box of Froot Loops in front of them,
you're not gonna win that argument,are you?

>> David Leal (23:02):
Froot Loops are great.
I know it's a real issue, and I think thisis part of there's a lot of talk about how
the Democratic Party is out of touch andhow it's run by coastal elites and
things like that.
And some of it's rhetoric,some of it I think is reality.
I think inflation.
This may be one of those thingswhere those critics have a point,
when the Democratic Party is.
If the Democrats andthe Republicans are switching,

(23:24):
if the Democrats are becoming maybe theliberal Republicans of half a century ago
and the Republicans are becoming like theSouthern Democrats of half a century ago.
If the parties are kind of switching up,well, a higher educated, higher income
kind of group of people maybe just doesn'tquite think about inflation very much.
And I don't know if the pronounissue specifically matters, but

(23:44):
I think there's plenty ofanecdotal evidence that
Latinos have been hearing about Latin X,they've been hearing about Latin E.
Those kinds of terms, I think, havebecome a kind of object of mockery for
many people.
They've become a symbol of a DemocraticParty that's getting a little bit
out of touch.
Maybe not as symbol, but a representationof a party that doesn't quite sort

(24:04):
of see real Latinos as they are and wantsLatinos to be this kind of more liberal,
more progressive, more Democraticconstituency than they have been and
have been for a long time.

>> Bill Whalen (24:16):
Hey, David, another topic area for you, the border and immigration.
I saw a CBS News YouGov poll put out byour colleague Doug Rivers over the summer
said 53% of registered Latino votersfavored Trump's deportation plan.

>> David Leal (24:29):
Yeah, it depends, of course, what we're asking people.
So if you ask people.

>> Bill Whalen (24:34):
How you ask it.

>> David Leal (24:35):
Yeah, how you ask it and what you give them as options.
So in general, the American public is infavor of, like you said, there are many
people who are in favor of deportation,but there are also lots of people and
actually much more people who are infavor of a path to legal status.
And when you give people a trade-off,
what you typically get is that thereare more people who favor like a path

(24:55):
to legalization than there are peoplewho favor like a deportation.
I think that there are manyLatinos who do take law and
order seriously,law enforcement seriously.
Of course, the situation haschanged a lot from 100 years ago,
when there basicallywere no immigration laws.
And if you could get here,you could stay for many people,
not everybody around the world.

>> Bill Whalen (25:15):
Right. >> David Leal
talk about immigration now, I think that,and this is true of Americans generally,
that Americans have a lot of sympathybecause we're a warm-hearted people.
We have a lot of sympathy for individuals.
And when Americans meet immigrants andhear about their stories,
they're often very sympathetic towardthat and hope that they can stay.
But immigrants, immigration isa category people see as kind of broken,

(25:37):
to use that term thatwe hear all the time.
And Latinos have never been aspro-immigrant as people think they are.
So there's this idea that Latinos are infavor of so-called open borders or
whatever.
And if you go back to the veryfirst national survey of Latinos,
which was calledthe Latino National Political survey,
conducted in 1989, 1990,the first real data nationally on Latinos.

(25:57):
I think 40% of that Latino sample saidthat there were too many immigrants in
America, and that was equivalentto the comparative white sample.
And lots of surveys over timehave found this in Texas and
other places that Latinos aren'tnecessarily as pro-immigrant or
immigration as many people think they are.
And so I think that's been anothersignificant confusion that the parties

(26:19):
have had on Latinos is about what theythink about these kinds of issues.
Yeah, but David, I've been in California for 30 years now.
I came out here in 1994 to work for PeteWilson when he was running for reelection.
And this was the year that Californiavoted on Proposition 187 and it passed.
But then,what began after it was a narrative.
The narrative was twofold.
One that Pete Wilson had done forRepublicans and

(26:39):
Latino voters what Hitler did forthe mustache industry, A.
But B, if you were tough on the border,you're gonna lose Latino votes.

>> David Leal (26:48):
Right, and that was sort of a story.
And I've written a little bit about this.
I think it's sort of an overstated story.
I think that there's a counternarrative that says, like, well,
who were the Latinos who actually mighthave changed their vote because of this?
And it doesn't seem like itwas the native born Latinos.
It was immigrant Latinos.
So maybe it's not a Latino story.
Maybe it's an immigration story.
And so maybe that's a broader storythat isn't really about Latinos per se.

(27:12):
There's also an argument that, you know,at the time, the, the Republicans in
California probably didn't lose anybody,that they weren't gonna lose anyway.
That the trends were already going,California had been contrary
to our current situation,a kind of at least a purple state.
And sometimes, it may have seemedeven like a bit of a red state, but

(27:32):
the trends were moving anyway.
And it just didn't seem likelythat the Republicans were
going to really hold on to that state.
And so maybe there are actually, there wasa confluence of events going on here and
people tried to pin the political tail onthe electoral donkey and say it was all
about Pete Wilson or all about 187 orthese other kinds of ballot initiatives.
But maybe that's notreally what was going on.

(27:55):
So I tend to be skepticalof the 187 story and
because it was just a little too simple.
And as we know,Latinos have never been quite as, as,
as pro immigration as wethink they have been.

>> Bill Whalen (28:07):
Right, but this ties into the shock factor with Trump in 2016 and
the continuing surprise in 2024 wherehe wants to build a border wall and
my goodness, he's saying Mexico is sendingtheir worst people over and so forth.
In other words, he is doing whathe can to upset Latino voters.
But it turns out he doesn'tnecessarily upset Latino voters.

>> David Leal (28:23):
Well, it's all about what are your issue priorities.
And also you have to evaluatea lot of rhetoric in politics.
Lots of people are saying lots of things.
I think there is evidence that whenpeople hear Trump saying things,
they don't always believe it orthey say that like, you know.
Well, you know, we, it's a, it'san indicator that he's going to change
things, that he's different, that he'sgoing to, like, you know, bring this new,

(28:44):
like, you know, fresh air to politics.
They don't necessarily believespecifically everything because, you know,
they don't necessarily believe that peopledon't necessarily believe that about any
politician.
And so it's not as if one issue,one border wall,
any kind of statement is gonnanecessarily change the Latino vote
because they're looking at other things,too.

(29:06):
Sure, you might hear some rhetoric, butthen you also go to the grocery store and,
and as you say, Froot Loops have tripledin price or whatever it might be.
And so there are other issuesthat come to the fore.
And so I think, and again,
we shouldn't sort of assume thatLatinos are prioritizing these issues.
A lot of Latinos have been here for like,many, many, many, many, many generations.
The immigration issue islike a distant memory.

(29:27):
Sure, they know that maybe at some pointthey were, they were citizens of Mexico,
their great, great, great,great-grandparents, or
something along those lines.
But immigration is a littlebit of a hypothetical thing.
They don't have anyimmigrants in their family.
They haven't been to Mexicoin their whole life.
You know, they just, it's just not likea real kind of issue compared to the many
other kind of mainstreampolitical issues that people.

(29:48):
And they also recognize that, you know,like any other American might,
that maybe there's a problemwith our immigration policy and
maybe we need to do something about it.
And what did Harris do?
Wasn't she the border czar orsomething along these lines or
given some kind of you have todo something about immigration?
It's sort of unclear what came of that.

>> Bill Whalen (30:05):
She was supposed to go explore the root causes of immigration
is the answer.
She was never the czar of the Tsarina.
She was gonna explore the root causes.
And the root cause is okay, right?
But I don't think we ever gota report on the root causes,
and I think the rootcauses are pretty obvious.
People are coming up here fora better life.

>> David Leal (30:18):
Yeah, I mean right.
The root cause is the American dream.
Immigration is, in many ways, good news.
We want people, and especiallyit's such an incredible journey.
It's such a difficult, often violentjourney to get to the United States.
People are taking incrediblerisks to come to America,
not because they want to turn itinto a socialist paradise, but
because they want the American dream, andthey don't like where they're coming from.

(30:38):
And so these are people whoare like they know about America.
They hear about it through the media,through their friends,
through their family.
These are people whoare coming here who want to.
They wanna work, they wanna live safely.
We need to find a way to welcome them.
We should really be welcoming all thesepeople who are coming from failed
socialist regimes across Latin Americabecause they really know what's what.
Democrats are using this kind of rhetoricof maybe less this time, but a couple of

(31:01):
years ago, there are Democratic candidatessaying they are Democratic socialists.
That's not gonna cut anything in Florida,
where there are a lot of immigrantswho know what socialism actually is.

>> Bill Whalen (31:13):
Okay, let me throw a theory at you, Professor Leal, and
you can either play with this orscoff and laugh at me if you choose.
This is the first presidentialelection after the pandemic,
our first post-pandemic election, andI look at the Latino vote in this regard.
Peggy Noonan has a wonderful phrase fordescribing the economy, and
she describes it as laptop jobs.
In other words, you andI have essentially laptop jobs.

(31:35):
We can take our laptop andgo travel anywhere around the country and
pretty much do our job.
I can do a Zoom call like thiswith you and do a podcast.
You could teach your kids remotelyif you wanted to at UT Austin.

>> David Leal (31:45):
Actually, no, I can't do it if I want to.
We're back in the classroom.
But I hear what you're saying, though.

>> Bill Whalen (31:50):
Yeah, exactly.
In other words, we're portable.
But if you look at the Latinos in America,especially what I might call aspirational
Latinos, those who are trying toclimb the ladder, they don't know.
Necessarily have laptop jobs, David.
They have physical jobs.
They have to be at some place and work.
They don't work out of their homes.
So the pandemic screwed uptheir economic existence.

(32:11):
Secondly, if we look at what happenedwith schools in the pandemic, David,
what did we have?
Lockdowns.
Kids lost education.
In essence,you had to have lousy homeschooling.
And also, keep in mind, David,if you're that aspirational person,
school also provides what issubsidized childcare for you as well.
And one party was definitely in favor oflonger lockdowns, especially in schools.
The other one was.

(32:31):
So this is my theory.
Maybe the Democrats in this election paida bit of a price based on the last time
around in 2020 with the pandemic,Latinos kind of thinking, gee,
which party took better care of us?

>> David Leal (32:42):
I think that's plausible.
I don't think we know enough aboutthe pandemic's political effect.
I'm not sure if people want tothink about the pandemic very much.

>> Bill Whalen (32:48):
It's just a theory, David, but as I experienced the pandemic in
California and you went through it inTexas as well, our lives were disrupted,
but ultimately not in major ways.
We could still do our jobs,we still move about.
Things didn't really change, but boy, itreally hit home if you had a physical job,
if you had to go report to work somewhere.
And again, if you counted on schools notjust to take care of kids, but also,

(33:09):
David, in the larger context of what?
You know that education is yourkid's ticket to a better life.
And when government officialsscrew with your education,
maybe you get mad about it andmaybe you get even by voting.

>> David Leal (33:20):
Yeah, I mean,
I think that's plausible that there'ssome kind of dynamic going on.
I think anecdotally,
the Democratic Party also didn't doa lot of door to door politics in 20.
I don't know what kind of effect that hadon a, on a population that was, you know,
growing and many people were enteringthe electorate as naturalized citizens or
as people turning 18.
We know the in person kind of recruitmentand GOTV is much more effective

(33:44):
than any kind of postcard or Robo call orTV commercial or Internet ad.
It's the personal dynamic.
And so it's possible that therewas some kind of, you know,
disruptive partisan effect too,by a Democratic Party that, you know,
stayed home more in 2020 and tried to relyon, on the Internet, whereas the GOP from
what I've heard, you know, did morekind of, you know, door to door in 2020.

(34:05):
So it's possible that thereare multiple kinds of effects going on,
policy and political,because of the pandemic.

>> Bill Whalen (34:11):
Okay, never too soon to look at 2026.
You're in the Democratic Party, David,and you're looking at what should be,
in theory, a favorable midterm,at least in the House election.
But you're also looking at Trump makinginroads and in various voting blocks,
including Latinos.
Now, obviously,
we can't say what the economy isgoing to be like two years from now.
If the economy is rugged,then tide goes in, tide goes out.
Trump andhis party pay the price for that.

(34:33):
But if you're looking beyondeconomic conditions, David,
and other parts of Democratic messaging,what's your advice as to what the party
out of power ought tobe thinking right now?

>> David Leal (34:41):
Well, I think they ought to be, you know, moving toward the middle.
I think they ought to be, when theytalking about Latinos, it ought to be,
like, about common sense, kind of,you know, bread and butter issues.
Let's not have the assumption thatthey're ideological progressives.
Let's understand whatthey're telling people.
What are people actually tellingpollsters that they care about?
I don't know if we really saw enough ofthis in the media in this election cycle

(35:02):
for Latinos or really anybody.
It seemed like it was all about pollsthat turned out to be not very accurate.
Maybe we need to get back to askingpeople what they really sort of think
in terms of policy.
I think the economy is going to be big.
We don't have to pretend that2024 was only about inflation,
only about the economy.
I think that the Latino vote is goingto continue in this process of sort of,

(35:22):
you know, building up toward the GOP as itmoves into the mainstream as they vote.
As Latinos vote more Republican, it getsmore attention from the institutional
Republican Party,that makes more investments.
And then you start to see real competitionin a lot of places where you really
haven't had real, genuine partycompetition, maybe even in decades.
And so I think this process of,you know, GOP investment,

(35:44):
a lot of grassroots Latinointerest in Trump, and,
and the GOP these days is going to,like, continue to build regardless.
But if Trump policies are seen by thevoters as leading to greater inflation or
any kind of negative economic consequence,
I think that that's going toclearly play out in the election.
So, it's really about, we all know thatMorris Fiorina at Hoover has his theory

(36:08):
of unstable majorities, which is that noparty can really consolidate its majority.
And if we go back for the last,like, you know, for decades now,
the parties have really swung back andforth in elections that we thought were,
you know, maybe realigning,like Bush in 2000 or
Obama in 2008, some people saying thatabout Trump now in 2024 in the GOP.

(36:29):
But every party overestimates its mandate.
They over interpret their mandate andbasically there's a cat here.
And so basically what they,what they do is they get into power and
they all try to shove their policiesdown the throats of the American people.
And the American peopleare actually very moderate.
Contrary to media rumor, the Americanpeople are bunched up in the middle on
policy issue after policyissue after policy issue.

(36:51):
They're not ideologues,they're not really fanatical partisans.
But the party system around them,the electoral context around them is more
a wingnut,we might call it more on the left.
Democrats, Republicans, maybe withpopulism, that's changing a little bit.
But we certainly see a situation in whichthe American people are stuck between
a media class, a pundit class,

(37:12):
a politician class that are very much onthe fringes and they're in the middle.
There's a lot of evidence that Latinos,
African Americans are actuallyfairly moderate on lots of issues.
They may vote Democratic,Latinos still today, but
that doesn't make them on the leftin terms of policy issues.
A lot of them are really in the middle.
And so if, if the Republicans overinterpret their mandate, if they,

(37:34):
if they do things that are seen asharming the economy or going too fast in
terms of policy, I think that'll come backto haunt them just like it's come back to
haunt the Democrats and the Republicansin, in past election cycles.

>> Bill Whalen (37:46):
Okay.
Realignment may not apply to your state,Texas.
And I think our eagle eyed viewers willnotice that as the wonderful tower behind
you in the UT Austin campus.
I mentioned Texas in this regard.
Obviously you look atthe map of America right now,
Texas has right now 40 electoral votes.
You add that to Florida's 30,that gives Republicans 70.
That's something of a counterbalance tothe Democrats having California, New York,

(38:08):
Illinois in 101 electoral votes.
But David, this narrative that Texas isslowly, inevitably trending Democratic.
Now this began, Mitt Romney got 15.8%.
He actually beat Obama by15.8% in Texas in 2012.
Trump wins Texas in 2016 by 9.1%.
And then in 2020, David,it's down to 5.8%.

(38:30):
So game on for Texas going blue,but the results are in for 2024.
They may move a little bit beforeit's all over, but right now, David,
the spread is 13.9%.
So it's about 2 points shy ofwhere Romney was back in 2012.
Let me throw a couple more numbers at you,David.
Donald Trump got 55% ofTexas Latino voters in the state,
according to exit polls.

(38:51):
He won 14 out of the 18 countieswithin 20 miles of the border,
a number that doubled 2020 performancein Latino majority region in 20.
Now shift to Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz won his Senate race,David, in 2018 by 2.6%,
a difference of 250,000, 215,000 votes.
In 2024, Ted Cruz won by 8.6%, David.

(39:12):
Another way to look at this, if youlook at the numbers in 2018 versus 2024,
Colin Allrad, running on the Democraticside in 2024, he grew the vote
by 956,000 over the 2018, butthe GOP total grew by 1.7 million votes.

>> David Leal (39:30):
That's right. And
you also see a lot more GOPprimary voting participation also.

>> Bill Whalen (39:35):
Right.

>> David Leal (39:36):
I haven't heard anybody use the phrase turn Texas blue,
non ironically, in several years now.
And so I don't think that that was like areal possibility because of the data that
you mentioned.
There really did seem to be a trend,at least at the national election.
There were some, you know, there werea couple of close statewide elections,
although most of them really weren't.
I think there was this idea,and it was all part of the,
the Democratic Party's demographic dreamthat, you know, if you had like, you know,

(39:58):
the big cities, maybe if.
You had an influx of more liberal voters.
And I don't think there's any evidence forthis in the exit polls that, you know,
that the people who have comeinto Texas from other states,
they seem to be pretty split, maybea little more Republican than Democratic.
So I don't think that that has worked forDemocrats either.

>> Bill Whalen (40:15):
That was going to be my next question, the California effect,
because I know when Greg Abbott ran forgovernor, there was the phrase,
don't California my Texas.
But then the fear amongTexas Republicans was, my God,
all these Californians are rolling in.
They're gonna make us California.

>> David Leal (40:28):
Yeah, no, I don't think that's going to happen.
I think that people leave states iscomplicated, like why they leave states.
I don't think that it's all about,you know,
I think people are trying to claimthat a lot of this is partisan.
I think people are moving forall kinds of reasons that do and
don't have to do with politics.
But I don't think there'sany evidence that, you know,
Californians are all going to like, youmove to Texas and somehow swing things,

(40:49):
certainly, like in the state Capitol.
It feels like there are a lotof Californians around here and
it also feels like a lot of themare on the progressive side.
But at the same time,if you look at the whole state,
I don't think that'swhat's really going on.
And you've also gotthe Latinos in the RGV,
the Rio Grande Valley,if you look at them in other places.
The economy matters a lot, you've gota lot, there's cultural conservatism.

(41:12):
There are a lot of otherfactors that are going on.
And I also think too, as I said,
this kind of genuine competition that'shappening now in a lot of Latino areas.
In the past, a lot of Latinoslived in areas where, you know,
neither party was really investing.
The Democrat took them for granted,the Republicans thought it was impossible.
Why bother,spend your money somewhere else.
But I don't think this isany plan by any party.

(41:33):
But I think a lot of Latinos, because ofthe political environment, have become
activated, they've become interested,they're really interested in Trump and
also aspects of the populistGOP in some ways.
And so I think that it's kind ofbubbling up from the grassroots.
It's no likenquote unquote, the vast rightwing conspiracy that liberals are always
talking about, I think it's really comingfrom Latinos themselves in many ways.

(41:56):
And that causes a real investment bythe institutional GOP, as I mentioned,
in activism, in campaigns like some of thecongressional candidates in the Valley.
Certainly, the Republican won reelection,Democrats have seen reduced returns at
the congressional levelin this election cycle.
So, you know, it's really, I don't thinkthere's any real trend that's working for

(42:18):
the Democrats right now in Texas politics.
You know,the best thing that they can hope for
is that maybe in the next midterm,if there are economic problems that
the voters associate with Trump and theRepublicans, that would be their best bet.
But as far as these other factors,whether it's, you know, the Latino trend,
which I don't think is in anyway solely about the economy,
I think it reflects lots of other thingsabout people moving in from other places.

(42:41):
And also things seem to begoing pretty well in Texas.
It's kind of hard to sort of look aroundand saying, this state is a disaster,
it needs to have likea complete partisan clean out.
There's nobody really saying that.
And I think the Democrats evenstruggle to kind of make an argument.
That's why they're relyingon abortion politics.
That's why they'retalking about democracy.
It's because for a lot of people,those are a little hypothetical,

(43:03):
they're not really what they'rewhat they're voting on.
And I think it's kind of hard tolook around the state of Texas.
You know, you can certainly like,you know,
find some statistics about poverty andsome other things and you can say,
all right, maybe there's room forimprovement here.
But I think as far as, like an electorategoes that looks around at how the state is
functioning, you know, there are alwaysgoing to be political disagreements and
personalities, but the state onthe whole seems to be doing pretty well.

(43:25):
And compare it to California.
What do voters wanna be?
Do they wanna be California,or do they want to be Texas?
I think a lot of them are finding Texas.
And the same thing in Florida,too, that was supposed to be,
if we can go back in time, 20,30 years, that was going to be.
That was a predicted state that theDemocrats would just inevitably take over
because they weren't thatfar away anyway from it.
And the diversifying Latino populationof Florida, the immigrant population,

(43:50):
that was supposed to be a deciding factor.
And it turns out that it was just forThe Republicans.

>> Bill Whalen (43:55):
Well, Republicans now outnumber Democrats in terms of voter
registration in Florida.

>> David Leal (43:59):
Yeah. And Republicans like DeSantis got what,
like 58% of the Latinovote in the last election,
just barely behind what he got statewide.
So the idea that, you know,Latinos were inevitably Democratic or
that they're attracted toDemocratic Party ideas or
candidates is just not finding a lotof favor wherever you look these days.
And again, it's not just about inflation.
It's a lot about.
I think, at the state level, it's aboutsort of state government governance,

(44:23):
state prosperity.
A lot of things are going wellin some of the red states.
And I think the Democrats have troublesort of seeing that and acknowledging it,
and that creates a problem forthem when it comes to their messaging.

>> Bill Whalen (44:35):
Yeah, so two observations, David.
I gave a talk in Dallas in late Septemberand got in the Uber at DFW, and
the driver asked obligatory,did you have a good flight?
Where are you flying from?
I said, san Francisco.
And he turns and goes, I used to livejust south of there in San Mateo,
which is not far from Stanford, actually.
I said, really?How long you been here?
And he said, about four years, I came outhere during the pandemic, and I stayed.
I said, why?He goes, two reasons.

(44:57):
Number one, no taxes, andnumber two, the state works.
So there's an impression that kindof the state attack together.
The second observation, David.
I got to my hotel room, checked in, turnedon the TV and up pops an ad from Ted Cruz,
and it's hammering his opponenton boys playing girls sport.
Turned it off, went to my event,got up the next morning, turned on the tv.

(45:17):
There's the hat again.
Going after him again.

>> David Leal (45:19):
So, yeah, as a college football fan, I saw lots of those ads.
I saw lots of ads by Cruz,I saw lots of ads by Colin Allred,
whose main theme seemed to be like,I'm a cool guy.
I played in the NFL.
You know, it wasn't Andhe even had some border ads, too.
You know, some little bit of, like,getting tough on the border the Democrats

(45:40):
felt like they had to doin this election cycle.
So yeah, how much that played into it.

>> Bill Whalen (45:45):
If you're a political junkie, by the way,
this is an ad for YouTube TV.
Because if you have YouTube TV andstream college football,
as I spend way too muchtime doing on Saturdays,
they end up picking the localfeeds from the Texas game.
From now that, Stanford's playing theAtlantic coast conference, the ACC games.
So I would watch a Texas game andI'd get constant Texas political ads,
and I'd watch an ACC game and I'd getNorth Carolina ads, and it was great.

>> David Leal (46:09):
Yeah, No, I remember seeing some ads from other states too.
And it's a nice variety.
Not that they were all differentnecessarily, but, you know,
it's a nice variety than hearing the I.
But I do think that, like, I thinkpolitical scientists tend to be a little
skeptical that any of that really matters,which is a little bit counterintuitive.
But, you know, our sort of the theory,the political science theory about like,
you know, the effect of the media andeven advertising has been what's called

(46:31):
the minimal effects theory, which is thatbasically the people who are really paying
attention to that kind of thinghave already made up their mind.
And the people who might potentially bemoved by TV ads or campaigns, they really
do their best to avoid it because they'renot interested or they're anti political.
And so the TV ad comes on and they lookfor a sandwich or they talk to the person
next to them on the couch or they flipchannels or whatever, I don't know.

(46:54):
I think in general, I think it's easyto sort of assume that, you know,
money raised and TV commercials running oreffective in practice.
I'm a little skeptical of that.
You know, there's nothing wrong withtrying it if you have the cash.
But, you know,I don't know how effective any of that is.
Maybe that's a subject for
future research to have a moredefinitive kind of conclusion about.

>> Bill Whalen (47:11):
It's funny to mention that, David, because post election,
now we're looking at howKamala Harris spent $1 billion.
And this crossed my mind several times.
I was watching a Georgia,Alabama game and her ads kept popping up.
I thought to myself,how many hardcore Kamala Harris voters or
swing Kamala Harris voters are rightnow watching the Alabama, Georgia game?
That's kind of Trump territory.

>> David Leal (47:32):
Right.
But, you know, but you could imagine, likein Alabama that wouldn't work so well.
But maybe in Georgia,where the Democrats have had some success,
possibly that would be worthwhile.

>> Bill Whalen (47:40):
Fair point.

>> David Leal (47:41):
Yeah, you don't need to win a lot of people, you know,
the money in politics argument is,you know, look at how Trump did in 2016.
He wasn't the biggest spender, you know,but yet he did pretty well and
surprised a lot of people.
So, it's not all about money.
You can spend a billion dollars, butyou can also waste a lot of money too,
because it's a little bit hard to.
To know how to spend it in waysthat are really, truly effective.

(48:03):
And you can try polling andfocus groups and things like that.
But fundamentally,
a lot of people just aren't payingattention to who you want to influence.

>> Bill Whalen (48:10):
Okay, David, final question.
I'll let you go.
Were you at all surprised by the results?

>> David Leal (48:15):
I'm not gonna pretend that I had a crystal ball and
that I saw the election outcome.
So I was pretty sure that the Latinovote was going to keep increasing for
Trump and for Republican candidates,
because we had been seeing thatin the Data starting in 2016.
And there was no reason to think thatthat was going to suddenly go away.
I think that in this election cycle themedia wasted a lot of our time with these

(48:36):
useless polls that didn't reallyturn out to be very helpful.
It seems like the betting marketswere actually like a better guide to
the election outcome than the traditionalkind of public opinion surveys.
So, I didn't really know.
I never had a confident senseof what was going to happen.
I felt like it was just a littlebit too much up in the air.

(48:56):
The media kept reporting differencesthat were not actually what we call
statistically significant.
They kept mentioning changes in the pollsthat were not statistically significant.
Or they would publicize pollslike Harris up 4% in Iowa,
that just didn't seem credible andseem like at the outlier side.
The media were wasting a lot of our time,and it was a little difficult to know.
So I'm not gonna pretend that I knew.

(49:17):
But I had a pretty good sense that Latinoswere gonna continue to move Republican,
for reasons that didn't necessarilyhave anything to do with the issues of
the moment or the campaign of the moment.

>> Bill Whalen (49:26):
Hey, Dan, we're gonna leave it there.
Keep up the great work.
Come out to Hoover.
Come visit.

>> David Leal (49:31):
I will.
I'm looking forward to it, thanks.

>> Bill Whalen (49:33):
Not today, It's supposed to rain like crazy today.
But come out when it's drier.

>> David Leal (49:36):
See you there.

>> Bill Whalen (49:38):
Okay, take care of my friend.
Good luck Horns.
Got a big game coming upin a couple weeks, A and M.

>> David Leal (49:42):
We do.
I know, it's wonderful.
It's one of the benefits of thisrealignment is that we get to bring
our traditional rival A and M back.
But also Arkansas too, who we just played.
So this is good stuff fromthe Texas point of view.
So hook horns.

>> Bill Whalen (49:56):
Yeah, by the way, I remember when George H.W.
bush was laid to rest.
Remember he went from Austin to,
from Houston up toa College Station in a train.
And they take the casket off the trainas he's coming off the train and
they start to carry it.
They start playing the Aggie War Hymn.
And I started thinking, poor Jeb Bush.
He's standing there andhe has got his hand on his heart.

(50:17):
He's mourning his father,but he's a UT guy.
So he has to hear that friggin song.

>> David Leal (50:21):
Yeah, a lot of the Bushes have been to UT.
So yeah, it's a great rivalry.
It's great color,great excitement, all that.
So I'm really looking forward to it.
So yeah, hook ' horns.

>> Bill Whalen (50:32):
Okay David, thanks for taking the time today.
Enjoyed the conversation.

>> David Leal (50:34):
Thank you.

>> Bill Whalen (50:36):
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(50:56):
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>> Presenter (51:21):
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