Dr. Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez
Assistant Professor of Ethnic/Equity Studies at the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He studies the relationship between Media, Politics, Health, and U.S. Latina/o/x Identity and authored Mobilizing the Latinx Vote (Routledge, 2020) and was a co-editor of Migrant World Making (Michigan State UP, 2023).
Email: arthur.sotovasquez@unlv.edu
U.S. Election 2024
25. Seeing past the herd: Polls and the 2024 election (Dr Benjamin Toff)
26. On polls and social media (Dr Dorian Hunter Davis)
27. How did gender matter in 2024? (Prof Regina Lawrence)
28. The keys to the White House: Why Allan Lichtman is wrong this time (Tom Fisher)
29. Beyond the rural vote: Economic anxiety and the 2024 presidential election (Dr Amanda Weinstein, Dr Adam Dewbury)
30. Black and independent voters: Which way forward? (Prof Omar Ali)
31. Latino voters in the 2024 election (Dr Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez)
32. Kamala’s key to the polls: The Asian American connection (Nadya Hayasi)
33. The vulnerability of naturalized immigrants and the hero who “will fix” America (Dr Alina E. Dolea)
34. Did Gen Z shape the election? No, because Gen Z doesn’t exist (Dr Michael Bossetta)
35. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 U.S. election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)
As they started to do in 2020, Latino voters continued to move toward Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Exit polls suggest that around 42% of Latinos supported Trump. First observed four years ago when counties in South Texas and Florida moved toward Trump, there was a larger nationwide shift towards Trump in the 2024 election across several heavily Latino areas. This troubles the conventional wisdom that an emerging multiracial electorate would benefit Democrats in U.S. elections.
Per the New York Times, counties where the Latino population is over 25% shifted +.9 points towards Trump in 2020. In 2024? The movement was +9.5. This was the largest movement among any county category analyzed by the New York Times. For example, Orange County, FL, which has the second-highest population of Puerto Ricans outside the territory moved 9.5 points toward Trump. This followed remarks by a comedian at a Trump rally that compared the island of Puerto Rico to garbage which seemed to have no effect. In the four South Texas counties on the U.S./Mexico border, each moved toward Trump, and three flipped to Trump. All of the counties are over 90% Mexican and Mexican-American.
So, what might be learned from the trend? The initial reaction from some Democrats and liberals has been to blame Latino voters for voting against their “interests,” wishing them the best when mass deportations come, or identifying a range of explanations such as machismo and proximity to whiteness. However satisfying those reactions may feel, they mystify some of the reasons Latino voters are moving toward Trump
First some caution and nuance drawing from years of research on Latino voters. It is almost a cliche at this point, but Latinos and Latino voters are not monolithic. There were historically solid Democratic partisan Latino voters and a small minority of solid (but consistent!) Republican Latino voters. Different national groups have different histories and geographical distributions. There is also evidence that some of the gains Trump achieved in 2020 among Latino voters came from previously unengaged, non-voters. While we do not have evidence yet, my strong hunch is that the gains seen this election also come from this group of previously unengaged Latinos, not former Democratic voters.
Second, it is becoming clearer that the markers of gender, education, social class, and religion play just as important a predictive role among Latino voters as they do among white voters. Latino men without college degrees and evangelicals, sub-groups where the Trump campaign had mobilization and persuasion efforts, moved towards him. Returning to AP VoteCast data, 47% of Latino men seem to have supported Trump.
Since many Latinos are working class, they are especially sensitive to prices and inflation. Equis Research noted the word huevos (eggs) would appear over and over again in focus groups and became shorthand for the pain inflation was causing among Latinos. Polls routinely bore inflation as an important issue and it should not be too surprising.
Immigration as an issue among Latino voters has been studied more extensively and the assumption has always been that anti-immigrant rhetoric and politics would motivate Latinos negatively. That was not the case in 2024. Some polls suggested Latinos did not believe Trump was referring to them when he spoke ill of immigrants. Others who did support Trump said they also supported his policy, even if they were immigrants themselves. In our own qualitative study of Latina Republican candidates for Congress, we found they strategically deploy conservative ethnic (but not racial) identity through anti-immigrant rhetoric. Instead of moderating anti-immigration rhetoric, these Mexican American candidates instead redirect the immigrant threat narrative towards other subgroups of Latines while using traditional Latine values like familismo and marianismo in their ads.
So, what might be the path forward? Democrats are in the political wilderness now. They lost the popular vote for the first time since 2004. That was an election with a lot of parallels to 2024 as George W. Bush also captured over 40% of the Latino vote in that election. Trump may have a chance to solidify his hold over a solid segment of Latino voters, since as one of the top Latino political scientist studying this trend says, “once voters learn to connect their ideology to their vote choice, it’s hard to reverse.”
Nevertheless, there were mixed results in this election. Those South Texas counties on the Border? Three of the largest ones also supported the Democratic candidate for Senate, Colin Allred over Republican Senator and Cuban American Ted Cruz. In Arizona, a Democrat Ruben Gallego will likely win the Senate alongside Trump winning the state. As the Equis Research shows, it may be the figure of Trump himself that motivates and energizes low-propensity Latino voters who otherwise would not vote. Trending toward Trump does not mean a majority voted for Trump by any means nor will be permanently Republicans. And if Latino voters as a majority keep saying the economy is more important than immigration, Democrats should listen.