The Latinx Vote in the 2024 U.S. Elections

This panel will explore the mobilization and preferences of LatinX voters in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. election.

Speakers: Ali Valenzuela, Associate Professor of Government, School of Public Affairs, American University. 

Marcel Roman, Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University.

Mindy Romero, Director, Center for Inclusive Democracy, University of Southern California, Price School of Public Policy.

Moderator:

Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

About the Speakers

Professor Valenzuela is an expert on U.S. electoral politics, with a focus on Latino/a/x voting behavior, demographic change and its political consequences, race and racism in campaigns, voter turnout, and survey and experimental research methods. He is affiliated with AU’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS) and a member of the Latina/o/x Studies steering committee. Professor Valenzuela uses surveys, experiments, and administrative data such as Census information to investigate Latino turnout behavior, support for candidates and public policies, and the effects of racial campaign messages on Latino partisan preferences. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters. 

Marcel Roman is an assistant professor at the Harvard Government department. His research focuses on Racial and Ethnic Politics in the U.S, with an emphasis on Latinx politics, immigration, and policing. His current book project examines how an increasingly restrictive immigration context motivates progressive politics among Latino communities despite countervailing conservative predispositions and assimilative pressure to adopt Anglo white political norms.

Mindy Romero is the founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy (CID), formerly known as the California Civic Engagement Project, which is part of the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and is based in Sacramento, California. Romero is a political sociologist and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on political behavior and race/ethnicity, and seeks to explain patterns of voting and political underrepresentation, particularly among youth and communities of color in California and the U.S.

Romero has been invited to speak about civic engagement and political rights in numerous venues, testifying before the National Commission on Voting Rights and the California Legislature, among others. Her research has been cited in major news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, Politico and the Huffington Post. She has also been a frequent guest on National Public Radio, Capital Public Radio, and several other NPR-affiliated stations in California. She is a regular op-ed contributor to the Sacramento Bee and CalMatters. In 2018, the McClatchy News named Romero a “California Influencer”, one of a group of sixty thought leaders in the state.

Romero works with a wide array of policymakers, elected officials, voter education groups and community advocates to strengthen political participation and representation. She is currently an adjunct fellow of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and former member of their Statewide Survey Advisory Committee. Romero was named to the National Academy of Public Administration’s 2023 Class of

About the Moderator

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.  He is also a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation.   His research focuses on democracy and authoritarianism, political parties, weak and informal institutions, and most recently, the crisis of democracy in the United States.  He and Daniel Ziblatt are authors of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times best-seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.  Levitsky has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).   He and Lucan Way are currently writing a book on the sources of global democratic resilience in the 21st Century. 

Presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.