At Bloomberg Opinion, Patricia Lopez writes that “Latinos were motivated by the same concerns that drove other voters in the new Trump coalition: an economy that has eroded working-class buying power and a flood of immigrants who were feared as competitors for jobs”:
Trump shrewdly played on those fears with his “Black jobs” riff, which he later expanded to include “Hispanic jobs.” His anti-immigrant rhetoric drew a bright line between Hispanics on the one hand and migrants on the other. “They’re going to be attacking — and they already are — Black population jobs, Hispanic population jobs, and they’re attacking union jobs too,” Trump said. “So, when you see the border, it’s not just the crime. Your jobs are being taken away, too.” Never mind data that shows the claim is untrue.
The pitch drew Latinos into a universe where many longed to be, included in the mainstream, and allowed them to participate in otherizing the new enemy — recent immigrants. Trump’s attacks also exploited tensions within the Latino population itself. Mexicans by far represent the largest and most well-established group of Latino Americans and occupy all rungs of society, from entrepreneurial billionaires on down. Puerto Ricans are American citizens by birth and some — though by no means all — resent being associated with those here illegally.
Trump gave permission for each group to look down on newer waves of immigrants that now arrive mostly from Central and South America and have proved as much a headache to Mexico as to the US.
In a prescient X thread on Tuesday night, Jack Herrera made a number of other important points, summing up his (excellent) election year reporting. He noted that Republican organizers paid more attention to low-turnout Latino communities:
Republicans [were] organized, funded, and ambitious in Latino neighborhoods this year, especially in South Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Democrats, meanwhile, keep prioritizing the most likely voters, in whiter, college educated suburbs. In low-turnout communities, door knocking and in-person outreach makes a huge difference.
And he explained that Latinos’ perceptions of Trump didn’t outweigh their basic economic concerns as a group that is 80 percent working class:
I’ve spoken with pro-Trump Latinos who aren’t shy about calling out his racist comments. They don’t have rose-colored goggles for the man. Still, many tend to assume his xenophobia is directed at undocumented immigrants, not them personally. Polling still find that most Latinos consider Democrats the more welcoming party. Republicans get read as racist. But Latinos vote strategically — the economy ranks as their #1 issue; racism trails far behind. And some think Democrats are also racist.
There’s another dynamic this year. In the past, the taboo for voting for Trump was intense. After Trump’s surprising success in 2020, however, the social consequences for openly supporting him are less severe. Do not underestimate how powerful this interpersonal element is.
He says that Democrats are losing Latinos in part because they are choosing not to court them:
Latino dealignment is a symptom of broader class dealignment. My argument, however, is that this transformation comes from electoral strategy as much as ideological shift. Democrats *could* win; but they’re not trying as hard as the GOP to win working class voters.
Bloomberg Opinion’s Patricia Lopez also concluded that Democrats are going to have to take long hard look at how to appeal to this enormous and diverse group of voters:
Ronald Reagan used to joke that Latinos were Republicans, “they just don’t know it yet.” Democrats have long sought to make Latinos part of their coalition — fighting for Dreamers, a path to citizenship, and better wages and working conditions.
But they may have lost a step in recognizing that Latinos are no more a monolith than Black voters or any other identity group. The Latino red shift could be a fluke or a permanent realignment. But expect the priorities of this multi-faceted community to come into a much higher profile as the two parties battle over them.
Equis Research’s Stephanie Valencia and Carlos Odio, meanwhile, are pushing back on the idea that Latinos voters can be blamed for Trump’s victory, as his swing-state wins and the shift of the Latino vote are in fact two distinct stories:
The magnitude of the gains Trump made in places like New York, New Jersey, and Texas — states that don’t decide the presidential race – were surprising and point to deeper discontent and broader trends.
But the support Trump received among Latinos in the battleground states should not have been a surprise to anyone who was paying attention. Those shifts were present in polling throughout the cycle and since the early days of the Biden presidency. Harris ultimately had the support she needed with Latinos to win, if all else held according to plan. Yes, Trump did make big gains with Latinos, but those gains are not what decided his victory. What happened in this election is larger than Latinos – Trump’s win came from a broader erosion of support in key battleground states. Latinos in the battleground states are a critical part of winning but they do not alone determine the outcome.
They also argue that Trump “Trump should not misread any gains in Latino votes as support for his full agenda — in fact quite the opposite”:
The Latinos who did move to Trump were clear: they want him to bring down prices. They rejected Project 2025, and told us repeatedly in focus groups and polling that they didn’t believe he would do any of the things his opponents said he would, from banning abortion to repealing Obamacare to deporting long-term immigrants like Dreamers. They voted for Trump because they believed he would prioritize the economy over all else, just as they did in voting for him.
UCLA political psychologist Efrén Pérez adds that based on his research, Latinos and other people of color are simply becoming more polarized, just like everybody else already is:
What I think we’re seeing is polarization catching up to people of colr. We get two parties and two choices and all of the internal heterogeneity of various people of color must be channeled and expressed through these two (!) parties. Both parties currently “own” different identities. Eg, Democrats are the party of people of color while Republicans are the party of “real” Americans. Many people of color have clear identity priorities. Among Asian and Latino individuals, about 27 percent of them value their American identity over their racial identity.
Part of what is happening with party identity among these groups is that they are sorting into the “correct” party that they see reflecting how they view themselves.
