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A new analysis from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI) and the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) reveals significant political differences between Latinas and Latino men in California — especially among younger voters and those without bachelor’s degrees. The findings, drawn from the May 2026 Berkeley IGS Poll of 1,912 Latino registered voters, challenge the notion that California’s Latino electorate behaves as a single political bloc.
California Latinas are more likely than Latino men to prioritize protecting immigrant communities, opposing the Trump administration’s agenda, and defending democracy and voting rights. According to the report, 69% of Latinas say protecting immigrant communities is “very important,” compared with 52% of Latino men. On “fighting the Trump agenda,” the gap is identical: 68% of Latinas versus 51% of Latino men. Democracy and voting rights receive the strongest support across both groups, with 87% of Latinas and 77% of Latino men rating the issue as very important.
“These findings show why California’s Latino registered voters cannot be understood as a single political constituency,” said G. Cristina Mora, professor of sociology and co-director of IGS at UC Berkeley. “Gender tells us part of the story, but the differences become much clearer when we also consider voters’ age and educational attainment. That more complete picture is essential to understanding the priorities of the Latino electorate.”
The gender divide is most pronounced among voters under 30. Among younger Latinas, 88% say protecting immigrant communities is very important, compared with 60% of Latino men — a 28‑point difference. On fighting the Trump agenda, the gap widens to 30 points: 82% of Latinas under 30 versus 52% of Latino men. And on defending democracy and voting rights, 92% of Latinas under 30 rate the issue as very important, compared with 74% of Latino men.
The report also finds substantial differences among voters without bachelor’s degrees. Seventy‑three percent of Latinas without a bachelor’s degree say protecting immigrant communities is very important, compared with 51% of similarly educated Latino men. On fighting the Trump agenda, the gap is 19 points (69% versus 50%). On democracy and voting rights, the difference is 12 points (88% versus 76%). By contrast, college‑educated Latinas and Latino men express more similar views, with gender gaps narrowing to between four and seven points depending on the issue.
These findings complicate broad narratives about the political attitudes of working‑class Latino voters. Even among voters with similar levels of education, Latinas and Latino men can place substantially different importance on the same issues.
“Although this survey represents California registered voters, the patterns it identifies deserve national attention,” said Nicholas Vargas, associate professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies at UC Berkeley and co-author of the report. “As both parties compete for Latino voters in races that will determine control of Congress, they should not assume that Latinas and Latino men — or voters of the same age and educational background — are responding to the political environment in the same way.”
Language adds another layer of distinction. Among English‑dominant voters, Latinas are 20 points more likely than Latino men to prioritize both protecting immigrant communities and fighting the Trump agenda (68% compared with 48%). Among Spanish‑dominant voters, the gender difference shrinks to just two points on both measures.
The study identifies several possible explanations for these differences, including the types of workplaces, community institutions, and information sources that connect Latinas and Latino men to political issues.
Sharp Gender Divide Among Latino Voters was first published by California Latino News and is republished with permission.
Brain science explains why voters reward charisma over results — and why the leaders who "fix" the most get credit for the least. A behavioral look at elections.
There's an old joke about a couple who finally solved years of arguing over decisions. "Since you're the man of the house," the wife said, "you handle the big things -- our stance on foreign wars, who we send to the Senate. I'll take care of the small stuff: groceries, the mortgage, where we live, what we eat." The husband agreed happily, certain he had won the better half of the deal. A few years later he realized the trade had gone entirely the other way. He held forth on geopolitics at dinner parties while his wife quietly ran every detail that actually touched his life: what he ate, where he lived, how his money was spent. What looked like ultimate authority was, in practice, near-total abdication over the things that shaped his days.
Voters make the same trade, and pay for it the same way. We keep hiring leaders for the qualities we would want in a spouse -- warmth, charm, a commanding voice, the sense that they see us -- instead of the qualities we would want in a mechanic: someone who can find what is broken and fix it before the whole system fails. We evaluate candidates the way we choose intimate partners, not the way we hire people to run complex, high-stakes systems.
This is not just a cultural blind spot. It has a biological driver. Brain-imaging research over the past two decades has linked our response to an inspiring speaker with a fast release of dopamine and oxytocin, the same chemical reward system engaged by a great meal, a new romance, or a win at the slot machine. A charismatic leader delivers that hit in real time, on stage, in a two-minute clip that circulates for days. Studies of split-second judgment go further still: shown a candidate's face for less than a second, with no policy information at all, people guess election winners correctly roughly seven times out of ten, based purely on a snap read of competence and warmth.
Good policy does not work on that clock. A tax reform, an infrastructure project, or a shift in interest rates typically takes twelve to eighteen months before its effects show up in the data, and years longer before ordinary voters feel them in daily life. The Federal Reserve itself estimates that the full impact of a single interest-rate change can take up to two years to reach the broader economy. By the time results arrive, the brain has already moved its emotional credit to whoever gave the most recent good speech, whether or not that person had anything to do with the actual work. Slow, structural improvement carries no dopamine spike, so it goes uncredited. Fast, emotional performance carries a large one, so it gets over-credited. The mismatch is not a character flaw in any one voter. It is a design feature of a brain built for a much smaller, much slower world.
This mismatch explains why screen presence so often beats governing experience at the ballot box. In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger won the California recall election with under half the vote in a field of more than a hundred candidates, arriving with zero governing experience and a résumé built entirely in front of a camera. He left office seven years later with the state carrying a budget deficit in the tens of billions of dollars, a gap that outlasted his tenure and shaped California's finances for years afterward. Ronald Reagan followed a similar route into the same office in 1966, defeating the incumbent governor by nearly a million votes on the strength of his screen presence and radio-honed delivery, not his record in public administration, of which he had none. His later political career is remembered as substantively consequential, which complicates any tidy conclusion. Charisma and competence are not always opposed. They are simply poorly correlated at the exact moment people cast a ballot, which is precisely when it matters most.
The clearest case of all sits in Tamil Nadu, India. In 1977, film star M. G. Ramachandran, known across the state as MGR, was elected chief minister after three decades of building a screen persona as the untouchable defender of the poor. His fans did not distinguish the role from the man. When he died in December 1987 at age 70, roughly one million people flooded Chennai's streets for his funeral, some standing in line for over a day. By multiple contemporary press accounts, around 30 grieving fans took their own lives in the days after his death, unable to process the loss. That grief was never about tax policy or administrative competence. It was the sudden loss of a one-sided emotional attachment as real, to the people who felt it, as losing a parent.
The divide runs along economic lines too, and this is the part most commentary on charisma leaves out. Voters with enough material security to treat politics as a form of entertainment can afford to prioritize a leader's decorum, stage presence, and rhetorical polish. For the much larger share of any electorate whose week is defined by grocery prices, rent, fuel costs, and job security, charm is an expensive luxury they cannot afford to indulge. They need competent mechanics who can diagnose and repair broken systems, not a warm and reassuring presence who makes them feel better about a system that keeps failing them. When the roof is leaking, you do not hire the contractor with the best smile. You hire the one who actually stops the leak, even if he is short with you on the phone.
Evolution built us for small tribes of a few hundred people, where a warm, confident face reliably signaled a trustworthy ally worth following into danger, and where the entire consequence of a bad choice was visible within days. That heuristic misfires today, in a world of roughly 8.2 billion people governed by institutions too large, too specialized, and too interconnected for any one charismatic figure to run on instinct and stage presence alone. The scale has changed by many orders of magnitude. Our wiring has not.
None of this means charisma is worthless, or that voters are foolish for responding to it. Communication matters; a leader who cannot explain a plan cannot build support for it. The fix is not to prize dullness over eloquence. It is to separate the two judgments that charisma tends to fuse into one: does this person make me feel confident, and has this person actually delivered results before. Structured evaluation helps here in the same way it helps in hiring for any other high-stakes role: a specific record of past performance, checked against verifiable outcomes, weighs more than a stage presence, no matter how persuasive that presence feels in the room.
We keep choosing leaders for spouse-like qualities and then act surprised when we get senator-like failures. The bill for that confusion comes due in stalled reforms, wasted budgets, and a public that trusts government less with every cycle, in country after country. Fixing it does not require voters to stop feeling anything at the ballot box; feeling is not the enemy. It requires one honest substitution, repeated at every election: stop asking who you would most want to have dinner with, and start asking who you would trust to fix what is actually broken. Until we make that substitution a habit rather than an exception, we will keep overpaying for charisma and underinvesting in the competence that actually improves lives. The résumé should outvote the smile.
Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D. is Director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former R&D executive holding 30 U.S. patents, he focuses on the analysis of human behavior, public health, and global affairs, drawing on an interdisciplinary background. He published in multiple RealClear platforms, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., Fulcrum, The Humanist, AFRO American, South Asia Monitor (on editorial board, and host of a show), and others.
A nonpartisan coalition of faith groups launches Faith in America, uniting prayer, video, and local events to promote respect and trust ahead of the 2026 midterms.
As the 2026 midterms approach, America once again finds itself navigating a season thick with suspicion, disinformation, and the corrosive pull of “us versus them.” Yet across the country, something quieter and more hopeful is taking shape. A coalition of the nation’s leading faith‑based civic organizations has come together with a simple but profound conviction: that the wisdom, compassion, and moral conviction of America’s faith communities can help our country navigate this election cycle with integrity and mutual respect.
This effort, known as Faith in America, isn’t a political campaign. It’s a nonpartisan invitation to bring our shared values back to the center of our civic life. Faith communities have long been among the country’s most powerful forces for civic healing and play an important role when fear and division threaten to drown out our better angels. Faith in America is stepping forward with a message rooted in dignity, respect, and commitment to honoring the will of the people.
At the heart of Faith in America is a simple idea: every voice matters. The coalition’s partners, including Braver Angels, Interfaith America, faith250, Paths to Understanding, Living Room Conversations, Listen First Project, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse, share a belief that the right to vote is not merely a procedural step in democracy. It is a civic sacrament, a ritual through which Americans express their will and reaffirm the promise that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights.
But that promise is under strain. Trust in elections has eroded. Disinformation spreads faster than truth. And the threat of political violence casts a long shadow. Faith in America emerged because these organizations recognized that silence in the face of these challenges is not an option. Instead, they are choosing to lift up a message of peace, respect, and shared responsibility.
Ways You Can Participate: The Faith in America program has three core pillars: national online prayer services, a social media campaign fueled by grassroots citizen videos, and local faith community gatherings.
●National Election Prayer Events: Our faith-based coalition is hosting two “Praying For America” events taking place on October 11th and November 1st. As prayer services, these events will embody values very different from those driving our divisive, zero-sum politics. They will be free from political speeches and partisan finger-pointing. Instead, we will focus on celebrating America’s core values as expressed through the right to vote. Register for one or both Praying for America events right now.
●Grassroots “I Have Faith in America” Video Program: We are inviting all Americans to submit short videos showing their commitment to free, fair, and safe elections. It is both easy and fun. We encourage you to make a personal video or do one with someone you differ with politically but share a deep commitment to respecting the will of the people. This link brings you to where you can make your video.
● Local Faith Community Involvement: We have a rich set of resources to help American faith communities pray for the country and incorporate themes related to free, fair, and safe elections into their services and discussions leading up to Election Day. Click here to explore these inspiring resources. Core themes include the importance of every voice, respect across differences, nonviolence, and the connection between elections and religious freedom.
We are inviting all Americans, whatever their beliefs or political affiliation, to participate in Faith in America. What binds it all together is a recognition that America’s democratic experiment has always depended on ordinary people choosing courage over fear and cynicism. While our nation has never fully lived up to its founding ideals, we have made real progress—progress worth protecting. We know that millions of Americans, across the political spectrum, are ready to take a stand. Faith in America is offering meaningful ways to do just that.
So what can you do right now? Register for our Praying for America online events. Take a couple of minutes to make a video or check out the inspiring videos other Americans have created. Host a local event in your own congregation or community and use our support resources to make it easy. Now is the time for every American committed to free, fair, and safe elections to step up and be heard.
Cheryl Graeve is Program Director & National Organizer, National Institute for Civil Discourse.
Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith is the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark (NJ) and co-chair of Braver Faith, a division of Braver Angels.
Brian Clancy is a board member of the Listen First Project.
A full rundown of this week's congressional action: 7 bills headed to the President, a stalled data center bill, and the votes lawmakers wanted on record.
The House wasn’t expected to stay in session past this week and, in fact, they left a day early after Rep. Massie (R-KY4) introduced an impeachment resolution against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Nonetheless, they powered through many more votes than usual. We’ll cover the seven soon-to-be new laws and the bills of interest we highlighted in this week’s preview. As is its usual function, the Senate mostly acted as a break on legislation that had passed the House.
These bills have all passed both chambers in identical form, so they next go to the President for signing.
These bills did pass the House, but with changes so now they go back to the Senate. The Senate can agree to the changes, amend them again and send them back to the House or just not act.
This bill passed the House by an overwhelming margin of 417-3. An attempt to move it quickly through the Senate failed because the bill only recommends that increased costs due to data center expansion be borne by companies building the data centers, but does not require them to bear those costs. Therefore, it did not get unanimous consent in the Senate to move forward. In order to get to a vote, the bill will likely have to be amended. However, there won’t be any action on it until at least after the election in November.
These bills will all go to the Senate next now that they’ve passed the House by voice vote. They are not close to becoming law.
All of these bills are still early in the legislative process. They will go next to the Senate where they may be amended or simply not acted on.
