December 12: What Do Trump’s Latino Gains Mean for Democrats?
Amid all the conflicting takes on how Donald Trump won the presidency after losing it in 2020, there’s a strong consensus that gains among Latino voters mattered a great deal. I examined this CW at New York:
Definite judgements about how the 2024 presidential election turned out should await voter-file based data that won’t be available for some time. But it’s pretty clear one of the biggest and most counter-intuitive shifts from 2020 was Donald Trump’s gains among Latino voters. Yes, there’s a lot of controversy over the exact size of that shift. Edison Research’s exit polls (which have drawn considerable criticism in the past for allegedly poor Latino voter samples) showed Kamala Harris winning Latinos by a spare 51 to 46 percent margin, while Edison’s major competitor, the Associated Press VoteCast, showed Harris’s margin at a somewhat more robust 55 to 43 percent. Other estimates range up to the 62 to 37 percent win claimed for Harris in the American Electorate Voter Poll.
But most takes showed sizable Republican gains from 2020, and for that matter, Trump did measurably better among Latinos in 2020 than in 2016 (Pew’s validated voter studies showed Trump winning 28 percent in 2016 and 38 percent in 2020). As Equis Research puts it, “this looks and sounds like a realignment.” And while close elections lend themselves to exaggerated focus on specific voter groups, the size and potential future magnitude of the Latino vote make it a natural source of deep concern for Democrats and optimism for Republicans. A New York Times analysis of the startling losses in vote share by Democrats in urban core areas in 2024 concluded that the most consistent pattern was significant Latino populations, which also showed major Republican gains in non-urban areas as well.
To state the obvious, it’s surprising that a politician so associated with nativist rhetoric and policies as Donald Trump is setting records for support in what has traditionally been a Democratic “base” constituency. Is this a trend that would have occurred without Trump leading the GOP, and if so, could it actually intensify once he’s left office for good?
It’s important to understand that this isn’t the first time a pro-GOP Latino “wave” seemed to be developing. While there was immense controversy over the exact numbers (in part because of uniquely flawed exit polls in that particular year), George W. Bush appears to have won about 40 percent of this vote, beating Ronald Reagan’s earlier record of 37 percent in his 1984 reelection landslide. According to the more reliable exit polls in subsequent elections, the GOP share of the Latino vote dropped to 31 percent in 2008 and then to 27 percent in 2012. Some reasons for this reversal of the trend that appeared in 2004 weren’t that hard to discern: the Great Recession that appeared late in Bush’s second term hit Latino households really hard, even as Republicans retreated rapidly from Bush’s support for comprehensive immigration reform (by 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney was promoting policies to make life so unpleasant for undocumented immigrants that they would “self-deport”).
But it’s possible that what we are seeing now is the resumption of a slow drift towards the GOP among Latinos that was temporarily interrupted by the Great Recession and a nativist uprising among white Republicans. Whatever unhappiness Latinos felt towards Trump’s immigration views was pretty clearly offset by economic concerns, especially among younger Latino men, who broke towards Trump most sharply. As happened during the Great Recession, the economy mattered most, and the combination of inflation (especially in housing costs) with tight credit eroded already-thin Democratic loyalties. As the above-mentioned Times analysis showed, defections to Trump happened all across the landscape of the Latino electorate, not just among more traditionally Republican-prone groups as Cuban Americans or South Americans. The question as to whether this is a party accomplishment rather than a personal accomplishment by Trump is an open one; Democrats did significantly better among Latinos in down-ballot races in 2024.
A general trend towards a more politically diverse Latino voting population makes some intuitive sense. As former immigrants slowly give way to native-born citizens, particularly those who are entering the middle-class en masse, it’s logical that identification with “the party of immigrants” will decline. Latinos who embrace conservative evangelical–and especially hyper-conservative pentecostal–religious practices also has helped intensify right-leaning cultural attitudes. We may never return to the days of reliable two-to-one Democratic advantages in this community, particularly as young voters who are especially alienated from traditional party loyalties move into the electorate.
While Democrats should be worried about the future of Latino voting behavior, Republicans have no reason for complacency. It’s now Trump and the GOP who are fully responsible for economic conditions which could turn out to be much worse than vague positive memories of the first Trump administration might suggest. And while (as some polling indicates) Latino citizens may have a negative attitude towards the recent surge of migrants that has become so central to Trump’s grip on his MAGA base, it’s less clear the mass deportation regime Trump has pledged to undertake immediately is going to go over well among Latinos, even those who voted for him. A recent Pew survey showed that Latinos were significantly less supportive of a major deportation program than other voters. And if the Trump administration pursues deportation round-ups in a cruel and ham-handed way (which elements of Trump’s base would welcome as a virtue rather than as a vice), or by methods that affect Latino legal immigrants and native citizens (most likely via ethnic profiling by law enforcement officials), we could see a pretty significant Latino backlash.
In other words, while some Latino trend towards the GOP may be inevitable all things being equal, it’s hardly guaranteed and could be sharply reversed. For their part Democrats need to get more serious about Latino voter outreach (particularly among young men) and identify (and learn to explain!) an economic agenda that prioritizes the practical needs of middle-class folk from every background.
There’s a lot of good points in this study but I will also point out several paradoxes within the party’s make-up which make solutions very difficult to reach.
1). Yes crime needs to be brought under control but it should be pointed out the U.S. had some of its lowest crime rates under Obama. Many constituencies within the party will not accept crackdowns which disproportionally target their communities or give a blank check for law enforcement to do whatever they want or not do anything at all as we all saw in Uvalde. As for immigration, well, one can make a pretense to “controlling the border” (certainly Obama did) but the bottom line is so long as the U.S. is rich and freeer and the rest of the world poor, immigrants are going to continue to try and get in and all the walls and raids aren’t going to stop them.
2). Yes inflation needs to be brought under control but are people willing to accept a recession that cost them their jobs to get it? I don’t think so. Given that it’s a world problem and that the U.S. cannot control Chinese supply chains or energy trading markets, Please explain what other solutions are out there, especially when oil companies deliberately sit on leases for oil drilling they already have?
3). Didn’t the Democrats just pass bills to deal with infrastructure and brining back jobs? What more do you want them to do?
Here’s the bottom line:
“people waiting in line felt like they’d worked extremely hard, sacrificed a lot, tried their
best, and were waiting for something they deserved. They’ve suffered long hours, layoffs,
and exposure to dangerous chemicals at work and received reduced pensions.
But this line is increasingly not moving, or moving more slowly [i.e., as the economy
stalls].Then they see people cutting ahead of them in line. Immigrants, blacks, women,
refugees, public sector workers. In their view, people are cutting ahead unfairly. And then
in this narrative, there is Barack Obama, to the side, the line supervisor who seems to be
waving these people ahead. So the government seemed to be on the side of the people
who were cutting in line and pushing the people who are in line back.
I dunno, I guess when some people who have always been in the back of the line start moving up out of simple human decency and fairness I suppose there will be people who resent it. I would think the solution is to make things move faster or not have a line at all. Either way, because some of those people “cutting” happened to vote for the party, what it supposed to do? Ignore them? You can’t please everyone but you can be fair to all of them. I think most people would support that but we have to realize it won’t be all of them and there’s really nothing that can be done to satisfy them.
The notion that you can do very little about immigration is weird coming from a party that treats government as a good solution for practically every issue.
Enforcement and rewards and penalties can be used in all policy areas.
A can’t be done and a shouldn’t be done comment. This is basically a summary of where the party stands.
Levison’s memo is good, but Teixeira’s letter of January 27th, “What Would Working Class Say”, is better at offering solutions. You can find it on The Liberal Patriot website.
According to Levison’s memo, which analyzes the problem accurately, ” Democratic candidates can identify with these narratives and seek ways to address the legitimate concerns that are a deeply felt part of the working class experience in modern America without endorsing the extremist narrative that has incorporated and exploited them with such marked success.”
No, we can’t. We burned that bridge long ago. When the working class raised these legitimate concerns, we called them racists. We told them that their concerns over issues like crime and illegal immigration were just “dog whistles” and “code words” for racism. Meanwhile, the Republicans told them that their concerns are legitimate and deserve action. The working class may forgive our inaction on their concerns but they will never forgive being told that they are fools or bigots for having them.
Andy Levison fails to point out what Democrats *should* say using this three part narrative. Do Dems buckle down on corporations hurting the working class to show they are on their side? Do we need to lie and pretend everything was wonderful for everyone in some golden past? This problem is painfully clear when he compares the rhetoric of Ryan and Vance.
I am getting a lot of scolding on this site but not a lot of positive solutions.