Texas' Latino vote might be harder to predict heading into this year's presidential election

Latino voters in Texas will be heading to the polls as a pandemic continues to disproportionately affect their communities. That means Latinos could be more distracted than usual – but they also have more to lose. Experts say this dynamic has made it difficult to predict what kind of impact the voting bloc will have. Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, assistant dean for civic engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin, said COVID-19 has been a huge weight on most of these voters. “We are the community that is hardest hit in terms of infection rate, in terms of death toll, in terms of economic hit,” she said. “Latinas have the highest unemployment rate. So, Latinos have a whole bunch going on right now.”