More than 62 million Americans have a Latino identity, making them the largest demographic group behind those who identify as white.

Those numbers add up to a huge amount of potential political influence

that both Republican and Democratic strategists would like to rely on. But the truth is, both parties

have a tendency to misunderstand Latino voters. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Well over two-thirds of Latinos living in the U.S. were born in the U.S.

They don't all speak Spanish. They aren't necessarily very culturally different from other Americans,

and they don't generally list immigration as their top voting issue. Because politicians have been

slow to catch on to these realities, my guest says Latino

voters don't feel entirely at home in either major party. But he's convinced the first party

to present an economic working class agenda tailored to Latinos will find itself in a very

strong position in national elections. Mike Madrid is a political consultant at grassroots lab and co-founder of the

Lincoln Project. His book is called The Latino Century, How America's Largest Minority is Transforming

Democracy. Mike, welcome to think. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the

conversation. This is so interesting. You note that Latinos are

to the right of most Democrats, to the left of most Republicans, and they are the fastest growing

segment of the American electorate. So how might Latino voters change the priorities of both

parties? Well, that's a perfect encapsulation. And the intro, I think, really grasped the moment here.

Latinos are basically, Latino voters anyway, are the moderates in both parties.

And the reason is because there's much less emphasis on the cultural wars that have sort of

consumed both the right and the left and modern American political discourse.

This is emerging, and it's important to say emerging. It's not shifting to the right. It's emerging as an

entirely new different voting block with much weaker partisan anchors, much more economically and

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