From Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, areas with a large Hispanic population had little in common on Election Day other than supporting Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris for president.
Trump, the president-elect, made inroads in the mainly Puerto Rican areas of eastern Pennsylvania, where the vice president spent her final full day of campaigning. Trump transformed South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a decades-long Democratic bastion populated by both recent immigrants and Tejanos with roots in the state spanning several generations.
He also increased his support among Hispanic voters along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor, which connects the Tampa Bay area — home to people of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian, and Puerto Rican descent — with Orlando, where Puerto Ricans account for approximately 43% of the local Hispanic population. Trump became the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County, which has a substantial Cuban population and is the country’s most immigrant-rich metropolitan area.
It was a realignment that, if sustained, could transform American politics.
Texas and Florida are already reliably Republican, but more Hispanics voting against Democrats in future presidential elections could further erode the party’s “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which had helped propel it to the White House before Trump swept all three this time. The move may make it much more difficult for Democrats to win in the West, particularly in states like Arizona and Nevada.
Harris attempted to show how Trump may have insulted or intimidated Latinos.
During his first term, Trump limited the use of Temporary Protected Status, which Democratic President Joe Biden granted to thousands of Venezuelans, and attempted to dismantle the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He also delayed the provision of disaster aid to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017 until practically the end of his term, having previously criticized the island’s government as corrupt and inefficient.
When Trump returns to the White House, he has promised to launch the greatest deportation operation in US history. This might have an impact on millions of families in mixed-status households, in which persons who are illegally present in the United States live alongside American citizens or those with permanent residency.
However, the Democratic warnings did not appear to resonate with enough voters for Harris. Now, the GOP must figure out how to reclaim votes from a key, rapidly rising demographic.
“Trump, he’s a very confounding figure,” said Abel Prado, a Democratic operative and pollster who is the executive director of Cambio Texas. “We don’t know how to organize against him. We don’t know how to respond. “We have no idea how to avoid taking the bait.”
In the end, many Hispanics were more concerned with financial issues than with immigration.
According to AP VoteCast, a survey of over 120,000 voters nationwide, over 7 in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, somewhat higher than two-thirds of all voters. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic voters reported being “very concerned” about their housing costs, compared to roughly half of all respondents.
Trump had a significant lead among Hispanic voters who were “very concerned” about the cost of food. Half believed he would handle the economy better, compared to almost four in ten supporting Harris. Trump held a comparable lead with Hispanic voters who were concerned about crime in their town.
“When they looked at both candidates, they saw who could improve our economy and quality of life,” said Marcela Diaz-Myers, a Colombian immigrant who led the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s Hispanic outreach task team. “Did he occasionally offend? Yes. But this happens during political campaigns. Many of those who voted for President Trump were able to see past this and believe that he will lead the country in the proper manner.
Harris promised to reduce supermarket prices by cracking down on corporate price gouging and to expand federal assistance for first-time homebuyers. Furthermore, violent crime rates have decreased in several sections of the country.
Shen also spent much of the campaign’s final days attempting to capitalize on statements made by a comedian at a Trump rally in New York who joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” She even called on Puerto Rican superstars, including Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, to condemn bigotry.
Nonetheless, Trump gained ground in some of Pennsylvania’s most Puerto Rican-populated areas, where Harris spent the most time campaigning. He won Berks, Monroe, and Luzerne counties, but lost Lehigh County to Harris by fewer than 5,000 votes. Biden had won by nearly three times that margin in 2020.
Trump’s triumph was much larger in Florida, where over a quarter of the population is Hispanic. He won the state by 13 percentage points, or roughly four times his 2020 margin.
Trump also flipped the central Florida counties of Seminole and Osceola, where many Venezuelans have moved as their native country becomes more unstable, and reduced Democrats’ lead in Orange County, which is also mainly Venezuelan.
Farther south, Trump won Miami-Dade County with an 11-point margin after losing it by 7 points to Biden and 30 points to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
According to Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County commissioner who served as state director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, Hispanics reject the “woke ideology.” Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights a prominent part of his campaign.
“To be clear, Hispanic voters are not buying what Democrats are selling,” Cabrera told reporters.
The same was true in South Texas, where most Hispanics are of Mexican heritage.
Prado, a Democratic operative and pollster, lives in Hidalgo County, the Rio Grande Valley’s most populous and 92% Hispanic region. Trump won it despite losing by more than 40 percentage points in 2016. Trump swept all of the big counties along the Texas-Mexico border.
Prado stated that Democratic county commissioners and state legislators helped gain money for new bridges over the Texas-Mexico border, as well as other efforts that have boosted commerce, economic growth, and job creation in the region. Still, according to him, “the Republican Party has done a really good job of inserting themselves as an answer to nonexistent problems and then taking credit for (things) that they didn’t do.”
Prado claimed that many Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, particularly devoutly religious ones, were disillusioned by national Democrats’ emphasis on reproductive and transgender rights, with the latter becoming a crucial electoral tool for Republicans.
“This nonsense about you’re going to send your son to school and he’s gonna come back a girl,” he repeated. “Our side laughed because we said, ‘No one’s going to believe that.'” But, no, it hit a chord.”
Others were simply wanting to cast a defiant vote, according to Prado, or were inspired by the image of self-made people embracing the American dream, despite the fact that Trump started his firm with a hefty loan from his father.
According to Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision, which owns the Spanish-language television network Univision as well as other television and radio properties, Trump’s popularity among Hispanics was driven by concerns, with Hispanics being more concerned about the economy and immigration.
Alegre, whose network hosted town halls with both Trump and Harris in October, also noted that there is a growing perception among Hispanic citizens that new immigrants are receiving more government services than immigrants who have been in the country for a longer period of time — and that the Trump campaign capitalized on this resentment.
“The most important thing either party can do is keep their ears to the ground and stay connected to the community,” he said, and the Trump campaign obviously did just that.