Latinos moving for Trump are at the center of the 2024 campaign

Former President Donald J. Trump’s growing support among Latino voters threatens to upend the coalition that has given Democrats victories for more than a decade, putting the politically divided group at the center of a tug-of-war that could determine elections across the country.

Polls show Trump’s standing among Latino voters has grown since his 2020 defeat, with some surveys showing he won more than 40 percent of those voters — a level not seen by a Republican in two decades. That strength has Democrats champing at the bit to retain the vast majority of Latino voters they have relied on in recent years.

The shift underscores a stark reality of the 2024 election: Neither party can win with white voters alone.

As the battle for both the White House and Congress shifts more directly to racially diverse states, both parties will have to rely on coalitions with Black, Asian and Latinx voters.

Latino voters will make up an estimated 15 percent of eligible voters this year, and 33 percent of eligible voters in California, where several swing districts are poised to determine control of the House of Representatives. Races in Arizona and Nevada, where Latinos make up about one in four eligible voters, are positioned to tip the balance of power in the Senate.

The battle for the presidency has expanded from battlegrounds in the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt in recent elections. President Biden relied on victories in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to win in 2020. This year, both parties are investing heavily in those states to sway the large numbers of Hispanic voters they believe are there for the taking.

“The Latino electorate used to be seen as a huge burden on Republicans. Now it is proving to be an asset,” said Daniel Garza, executive director of the Libre Initiative, a conservative group targeting Latino voters and funded by American for Prosperity, the group founded by Charles and David Koch. “Republicans can’t win without them — it would be political malpractice not to have them in a winning coalition.”

The shifts within a large and diverse demographic group defy simple explanation. Differences between regions, generations and economies all play a role.

Mr. Trump has found new support among Latinos who work in law enforcement along the Mexican border, Cuban Americans in Florida who are averse to policies they say approach socialism, evangelical Christians drawn to Christian nationalism and U.S.-born Latinos of the second and third generations who are more likely to identify with and vote like their white peers.

One of the clearest trends is the education gap. Trump monitors the divide among voters in general things are getting better among Hispanic voters without a college degree than among college-educated Hispanic voters.

“The nation’s Latino population is now so large it’s multi-story,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center. “This has changed before, and it may change again, but even if the stocks don’t change, the numbers will continue to rise – and that will have important implications.”

The changes present a tantalizing prospect for Republicans: The parties may see a political realignment, with Republicans pulling some working-class black and Latino voters from the Democratic coalition and Democrats capturing a share of higher-income, college-educated white voters. win. voters who would once have ended up in the Republican Party. It’s a voter swap that could be a lifeline for Republicans, whose dependence on white voters in a diversifying country has had strategists predicting doom for years.

“A moment like this would have been unfathomable in 2016,” said Patrick Ruffini, a pollster who argues the Republican Party is assembling a more multiracial coalition. “The belief was that Republicans needed to moderate immigration reform. Now you have a character who not only ignores that, but turns it completely on its head. It debunks decades of conventional wisdom.”

However, it is unclear how extensive and lasting the changes in the Trump era will be. Polling on partisanship shows that Latino voters have been fairly steadfast in their partisan identification, although they have recently begun drift towards the Republican Party. Republicans have gained some support from black voters in the polls, but there is no clear evidence of a mass movement.

Some Democratic strategists believe current polls overestimate Hispanic support for Trump, in part because they may exclude too many voters who primarily speak Spanish. They also believe that many Hispanic voters will return to President Biden in the coming months, arguing that Trump’s rhetoric will turn them away.

“The Democrats are balancing two realities: the polls failed and we won, but there are still warning signs,” said Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist who runs focus groups with Hispanic voters. She said she often heard those voters focused on their economic security.

“Status threats are powerful because Latino voters know they are in a race to avoid last place,” she said. “They don’t want to be a loser, and they know it’s an uphill climb.”

It is difficult to overstate the dramatic growth in the number of Latino voters over the past two decades. An estimated 36 million Latinos will be eligible to vote this year, an increase of almost four million as of 2020 alone and more than double compared to 2008.

Many Latino voters have long had weak loyalty to either party. In 2004, for example, roughly four in ten Latino voters chose George W. Bush, the most support ever from Latinos for a Republican presidential candidate.

Just four years laterAccording to exit polls, the Democratic advantage nearly doubled, with nearly 70 percent of Latino voters choosing Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain of Arizona. In 2020, support for Republicans increased again thanks to Mr. Trump.

Since 2020, Republicans have expanded their reach among Hispanic voters. They have attracted more Hispanic candidates, especially in parts of Florida, Texas and New Mexico, and have reached Hispanic voters more often. Large evangelical groups that once focused largely on white congregations have expanded their political reach to include Latino churches.

“This election will be decided at the margins, and we are going to aggressively reach these voters,” said Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. “If we can keep this momentum going, if we can turn away Biden’s support, we will win.”

Many Democrats are baffled by the Republicans’ incursions as Trump continued to unleash inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants, including those from Latin America, “poisoning the blood of our country” and promising draconian policies such as mass deportations. He has advanced the Great Replacement conspiracy theory by claiming that Democrats welcome undocumented immigrants to the United States because they will make them vote for the party illegally.

Interviews and surveys show that many Latino voters do not see themselves as the target of Trump’s comments. Instead, they often say they welcome his talk of cracking down on the border and see him helping entrepreneurs and the economy.

“The Democrats let us down time and time again,” said George Rodriguez, 57, who lives in Las Vegas and calls himself a Chicano Republican. ‘They are losing us because we don’t want handouts. We don’t want – we don’t need your hug. We want a direction. We want jobs.”

Some polls show that Latino votersViews of the Democratic Party remain positive. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that nearly 80 percent of Latino voters thought the Democratic Party “really cares about Latinos” and about 70 percent said the party was “working hard to earn the votes of Latinos.” , compared to 45 percent for Republicans.

To some extent, the shift among Latino voters may have as much to do with dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden as it does with enthusiasm for Mr. Trump. Young Latino voters – like other young voters – are moving away from Biden out of frustration over the economy and the war in Gaza. And Latinas have been moving toward Trump at the same pace as Latino men, worrying some Democratic strategists who are banking on abortion rights to be a major issue this fall.

“I want to hear something positive more often,” said Elisa Iñiguez, 69, who emigrated from Mexico to Southern California more than 40 years ago. She has almost always voted for Democrats and plans to vote for Biden, she said, but has grown frustrated in recent years. “We have to take more into account the people who are already here. We all want the same rights.”

The Biden campaign says it is mainly targeting two groups: people who voted for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, in 2016 and switched to Trump in 2020, and a much larger group of new or inconsistent voters. Latinos make up a significant portion of both categories.

“The president’s campaign does not ask for, but deserves, the support of our community,” Michelle Villegas, the Biden campaign’s Latino voting director, said in a statement.

Biden campaign officials said they had spent about $25 million on radio ads, and had plans to spend another $30 million across social media and on platforms that attract large Latino audiences, such as podcasts and YouTube and sports shows.

The political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, known as BOLD PAC, has also encouraged candidates to use Spanglish in ads as a way to reach native English speakers, who make up a large majority of Latino voters.

“Our party has not done a good job of truly speaking to the Latino community because too often we have been taken as monolithic and taken for granted,” said Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Democrat of Florida and an Afro-Cuban American. who is leading some of these efforts.

Mr Frost said he was encouraged by the party’s efforts so far this year. “The president doesn’t have to do it alone.”