On average, immigrants support democrats. For example in 2016: https://www.statista.com/statistics/632012/voter-turnout-of-.... It’s the same result for Obama versus Romney, etc.

On the other hand they have been trending Republican in the Trump era, and Trump probably won them narrowly: https://www.cato.org/blog/naturalized-immigrants-probably-vo.... But the same analysis says Biden won them by 27 points in 2020.

Both facts are true, both facts are bad. In the long run, immigrants will culturally change both parties just as they change the whole country. What will happen, and is already happening, is that American politics will begin to resemble Latin American politics. People voting for who promises more free stuff most of the time, punctuated by periods of right-wing authoritarian reaction.

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mindslight a day ago | parent [-]

Your original comment included the implication that this was a deliberate pillar of the Democratic party. ("[one] party can only win by people who are zero or only one generations away from countries that aren’t very well governed"). That is outside of the scope of a dispassionate analysis, so regrouping at one is a bit disingenuous.

But responding to your new goal posts - if immigration is so central to this dynamic, then why is most of the support for the current authoritarian reactionary promising more free stuff still coming from non-immigrants? Shouldn't the noble non-immigrants see the populism trap and heartily reject it? And since they aren't, wouldn't a better explanation just be that politics in general is decaying towards simplistic populism? And that this focus on immigrants is merely another simplistic populist narrative (from both parties really, even though only one has made it central to their platform).

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rayiner a day ago | parent [-]

> Your original comment included the implication that this was a deliberate pillar of the Democratic party. ("[one] party can only win by people who are zero or only one generations away from countries that aren’t very well governed")

Wait, hold on. That’s a purely factual statement. Immigrants are 10% of the electorate. If they support one party 2:1, that’s enough to swing many presidential elections. In fact, half of Trump’s win in 2024 is attributable to immigrants going from Biden +27 to Trump +1. Without immigrants (and their kids), it would be very hard for Democrats, in their current form, to win a national election. That’s just a factual statement.

I don’t think being a party that can only win with immigrant support is a “deliberate pillar” of the party. It’s just a consequence of traditional American culture being very different from the cultures in other countries when it comes to views about government.

> then why is most of the support for the current authoritarian reactionary promising more free stuff still coming from non-immigrants?

Because most people are non-immigrants.

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mindslight 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not taking issue with the factual background, but rather your motivated reasoning around it (including taking current statistics, imagining changing one thing in isolation, and considering that causal).

We could just as easily say that newer immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat because they are fresh with the reasons they came to this country in the first place plus they just got done studying for the citizenship test, whereas families who have been here for a while take our country for granted which is why they so easily buy into narratives aimed at destroying it.

	▲	rayiner 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be clear, I’m not characterizing why immigrants vote democrat. When I talk about the home counties being dysfunctional that’s not a dig at democrat policies. They could come here and vote republican and it would present the same problem.