“It was just the better of both evils…”: Latino Democratic Voters, Political Ambivalence, and the Cultural Work of Partisanship

• In Event: 30801 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session I

Abstract

Although most Americans have pervasive negative views of national politics, this does not stop them from participating in national elections or identifying with national political parties. How can we explain these complicated contradictions of unfavorable feelings toward politics, partisanship, and voter behavior? This dissertation chapter draws on 44 original, in-depth interviews with Latino Democrats and Independents to examine American political ambivalence. For the respondents, I note how structural racism, immigration politics, and political institutions shape individual-level ambivalence in US Latinos’ political behavior. In doing so, I argue that despite pundits and scholars’ contemporary hyperfocus on Latino Republicans’ seemingly “paradoxical politics” (Cadena 2023), Latino Democrats, liberals, and independents are noteworthy to study because they, like the public at large, make meaning, navigate, and reconcile ambivalence around their political behavior. More than just expressing “conflicted” feelings, respondents note the constraints and limitations placed upon them by the institutional frameworks of the two-party system, politically polarized elites, and ethnoracial electoral capture. I also examine how respondents use cultural repertoires to resolve ambivalence through different strategies. In doing so, I contend that Latino Democratic voters highlight the disjuncture between social identities, partisanship, and the political field in ways that center the social structural dynamics of individual-level ambivalence and individuals’ creative potential to use culture to resolve ambivalence.

Author

• Roger S. Cadena, University of North Carolina-Wilmington