Some might be tempted to shrug. Don’t conservatives vote Republican already? Not among minorities.

Large segments of minority groups and immigrants identify as conservative but vote Democrat. As white lefties pull the Democrats further leftward, tensions with Woke Supremacy are rising. 

And Democrats are starting to worry.

Public Opinion Strategies, which conducts surveys for NBC News/Wall Street Journal, provided me with data on presidential voting from 2012 to 2020 that show significant Republican gains among the roughly 30 percent of Black and Hispanic voters who self-identify as conservative.

From 2012 to 2020, Black conservatives shifted from voting 88-7 for the Democratic candidate to 76-17. Black conservative allegiance to the Democratic Party fell by less, from 75 percent Democratic, 9 percent Republican to 71 percent Democratic, 16 percent Republican.

The changes in voting and partisan allegiance, however, were significantly larger for self-identified Hispanic conservatives. Their presidential vote went from 49-39 Democratic in 2012 to 67-27 Republican in 2020. Their partisan allegiance over the same period went from 50-37 Democratic to 59-22 Republican.

Republicans are winning a majority of Hispanic conservatives. How much does that matter?

Roughly one-third (32%) of Latino registered voters describe their political views as conservative, while 36% say they are moderate and 28% say they are liberal.

Hispanic men are more likely to call themselves conservative, (27%), non-millennial (40%) much more than millennials (21%), which ought to be reassuring to Democrats, but among those who don’t have a high school degree, 43% identify as conservative, 45% among those who mainly use Spanish, and 36% who are foreign-born.

Those are exactly the sort of voters that Democrats usually count on voting for them. Sort of. Remember DACA? The argument for DACA tested well in polls, but it also tests better when it comes to voting. Turning a bunch of millennial college graduates into citizens would be most favorable to Democrats.

The even scarier, to Democrats, the explanation for why President Trump won Hispanics is that he did so for the same reason that they called him a racist.

The Lake Research survey produced an unexpected result: Latinos were more sympathetic than either white or Black voters to Republican “dog whistle” messages.

The dog whistle messages tested by Lake Research included:

Taking a second look at illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs, is just common sense. And so is fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.

And

We need to make sure we take care of our own people first, especially the people who politicians have cast aside for too long to cater to whatever special interest groups yell the loudest or riot in the street.

The receptivity of Hispanics to such messages led Haney-López to conclude that “those Latinos most likely to vote Republican do so for racial reasons.”

What matters most, Haney-López continued, “is susceptibility to Republican ‘dog whistle’ racial frames that trumpet the threat from illegal aliens, rapists, rioters and terrorists.”

This is a slow learning process for both sides. Everything that the consultant class had been telling Republican and Democrat politicians was very wrong. The question is which side will learn first. This is an article from the New York Times, the second in a series, warning Democrats to tone down the wokeness. Will Republicans learn that populism works with Hispanic voters? Or will the party go back to the failed Romneyisms?