It is these voters who will decide the midterm elections

Jen Hernandez will decide who controls Congress this year.

Not alone, of course. But people like Hernandez — a married Mexican-American millennial without a college degree, living in a small town — are disproportionately important in determining control of the House this year, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Hernandez, a 43-year-old who works nights in manufacturing and lives an hour north of Denver, said she doesn’t identify with any political party.

She has voted for Democrats, Republicans and third-party candidates. She worries about securing the border, buying her migraine medication and finding ways to save money on groceries at the local King Soopers.

“I don’t think I’m much different from anyone else in the country,” she said. “I only have one voice.”

But Hernandez’s vote is especially crucial in a midterm election year in which she fits almost every demographic that a Post analysis shows is likely to carry outsized political weight.

If political campaigns in years past were focused on winning over “soccer moms” or “NASCAR dads,” this year’s election might come down to people like Hernandez, who lives in one of three dozen House districts that could go to Democrats or Republicans.

What should his group be called? She threw around a few different labels after discussing them with her family: “The Unclaimed Middle.” “Steel toes and tamales.” »

Or more succinctly, she said, “overtime mom,” because she spends most of her free time working overtime to make ends meet.

Battleground districts like the one where she lives are home to about 10 percent of the U.S. population, but tend to have more Hispanic adult citizens than the country as a whole, according to a Post analysis. In these districts, homeownership and marriage rates are higher and residents are more likely to live in small towns. Hernandez used to own a home and would love to have one again, but otherwise she checks all the boxes.

A lot people in these areas are “overtime moms” like Hernández, who has not yet decided who she will support in Congress. Both parties are pursuing it and its neighbors in Colorado’s 8th District.

First-term incumbent Republican Gabe Evans has appeared on Spanish-language radio stations to cater to his constituents and in some cases attempted to separate himself from President Donald Trump, whose poll numbers are near historic lows. Evans’ Democratic challenger, Manny Rutinel, highlighted bipartisan efforts during his tenure in the state Legislature.

Both launched bilingual ads, emphasizing that they, too, are Hispanic millennials — another demographic more common in battleground districts — from working-class backgrounds. (Evans is 40 years old and Rutinel 31 years old).

Hernandez is trying to do his part. She keeps a list of candidates’ policy positions in a spiral notebook that she pulls out when TV ads come on, divided by topic: health care, the economy and immigration.

The districts most representative of these “Latino moms” dot the map, including Rust Belt cities in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, U.S.-Mexico border towns in southern Texas and southern New Mexico, and a large swath of Florida.

But none is truer than Colorado’s 8th District, which Hernandez travels several times a week from his home in Greeley to his night shifts at a food manufacturing plant about 35 miles away.

Her blended family is something of a political microcosm of the district: Her husband, Daniel, who works as a rig manager in the oil fields, is a “die-hard Republican,” she said. Their eldest son, a union plumber in Brighton, is conservative. Their daughter, who works in the homeless field in Greeley, is a staunch Democrat. The youngest, a middle school basketball coach who plans to become a deacon or pastor, isn’t sure.

As Colorado moved from a swing state to a blue state, Hernandez followed the trend and voted twice for Barack Obama. She wrote in comedian Roseanne Barr in 2016 (there were no better options, she says), then settled on Joe Biden and more recently Jill Stein. For Congress, however, she voted for Republicans, including Ken Buck in 2020, before the state’s congressional districts were redrawn.

This year, she’s not sure. She’s not a fan of Trump, who she says is “lining his pockets on the backs of harder-working Americans.” But she is also skeptical of Democrats, many of whom seem too left to her.

To make a decision this year, she researches candidates’ positions and records in local news and state legislative sites — especially on issues affecting her own life.

Between caring for two dogs (a cane corso named Matilda Jones and Barbara Lynn Dorothy Hernandez, a pug), she makes big batches of carnitas for rotating group dinners so she and her neighbors can spend less on groceries.

Houseplants also suffered a bit, she said, because she turned off the grow lights to save electricity. She has had to forgo some prescriptions at the grocery store because they are so expensive – even with her company’s insurance.

His Volkswagen Passat sits idle because the diesel it runs on costs him $150 a week for his commute. For now, she borrows her father-in-law’s Ram pickup truck to pay about a third less at the pump.

Hernandez says Rutinel is his guy when it comes to health care. She likes Medicare-for-all, the government-run health plan he previously supported.

But Evans, the Republican, has the edge on energy issues. Rutinel previously called for a ban on fracking — and although he has since changed his position, Hernandez said he presents himself as an about-face in the industry that employs her husband.

“If something happened with oil and gas, we would be out on the streets,” she said.

A third-generation Mexican-American with some Navajo heritage, Hernandez said the United States was built on immigration and notes that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

On her way to work in Longmont, she takes backroads past ranches that, over the summer, advertised jobs paying $1,000 a week — plus room and board. because they desperately needed workers. The Facebook group she joined to learn about yard sales in Greeley turned into a list of potential sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents downtown.

She is a vocal critic of Trump’s deportations, but she also appreciates how Evans, the author of an opinion piece on immigration, Before even showing up in Washington, he expressed views on the issue that diverged from those of his party, while advocating for a narrower, more secure border.

Most of all, she said, she’s tired of seeing each of the candidates attack each other — with Evans calling Rutinel a “radical” and a “socialist” and Rutinel saying Evans voted with Trump “100 percent of the time.”

“It’s so sad that these campaign ads are ‘Fight, fight, fight’ instead of ‘Improve, improve, improve,'” she said.

If she got what she wanted, she said, the United States would have many more political parties and a different government structure, with more room for people “in the gray area” she occupies.

But for now, she will continue to add points to her pro/con list. She knows that the campaigns will be monitored.

Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.