New Poll Shows Only 2% Of Hispanics Use Term ‘Latinx,’ Many Find It Offensive

Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.

More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.

This latest poll is nearly identical to a 2019 survey that found 98% of Hispanics preferred a term other than “Latinx” to describe their heritage. At the time, the progressive founder of ThinkNow Mario Carrasco said that based on the results, he would “advise my colleagues across the various marketing, human resources, journalism and communication disciplines to avoid using ‘Latinx’ as a descriptor for all Latinos.”

Pollster Fernand Amandi — whose firm ran the newest poll — echoed these sentiments, telling Politico, “The numbers suggest that using Latinx is a violation of the political Hippocratic Oath, which is to first do no electoral harm,”

“Why are we using a word that is preferred by only 2 percent, but offends as many as 40 percent of those voters we want to win?” he added.

Politico noted that elected Hispanic Republicans also believe the term is driving voters toward the GOP:

Virginia Republican Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares — who is of Cuban descent and will be the first Hispanic to hold the office in the state — said the word Latinx turns off Latinos.

“By insisting on using the incorrect term Latinx, progressives are engaging in a type of cultural Marxism, a recast of societal norms,” he told POLITICO. “Latinos don’t use the term — only upper-educated white liberals who hardly interact with the Latino community. I believe that every time they use the term Latinx, they lose another Latino vote.”

Politico also reported that Democratic activists understand the term is off-putting for some Hispanics. To avoid this, they use “Latinx” only when addressing younger progressives:

Kristian Ramos, a Latino outreach specialist and Democratic strategist, said there’s a generational split between “young activists who very much identify as Latinx, and then you have your general population that has no idea what that word means and finds it sort of mystifying and ridiculous.”

Ramos said he also uses Latinx judiciously, largely by targeting it to the progressive and young base of the Democratic Party. “Otherwise, it turns into this debate, and then it turns into this tedious, linguistic gymnastics. Look at who actually uses ‘Latino:’ Univision and Telemundo. Their whole audience is Spanish-speaking Latinos. By and large, they avoid using Latinx. I suspect that they know that when they use those terms, they may lose more than 90 percent of their audience and 40 percent of their audience could get offended.”

Univision’s co-founder Joaquin Blaya responded that “Democrats are helping Republicans make them look out of touch.”

“We built a network around our Spanish language and we have a shared culture around it. Why are we trying to change this? It’s offensive to a lot of people,” the registered Democrat told Politico.

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