There has been an argument for years now that the so-called Latino vote was becoming the voting bloc that would change the American political landscape. In 2020 the Democrats targeted America’s Hispanic voters hoping they would make the difference on Election Day. They did not. Furthermore, it never will because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats and others arguing that a Latino vote exists do not understand America’s Hispanics. Hispanics in America are not monolithic like the Jewish people can be when it comes to threats on the Jewish faith or people. Jews are diverse like Hispanics with differing cultural and social beliefs, but most share the history of the Holocaust. It is this shared history that allows many Jews to come together in times of threats to them or their country.
Not so with American Hispanics who hail from different identities and experiences. For example, the Cuban Latinos generally have Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution as a historical constant. Their worldview is painted by that experience. Mexican Americans have several worldviews depending on their family and personal histories. There are the Mexican Americans that became so after the Mexican American War when they were absorbed into the United States. Many others were forced into American to escape the Mexican Revolution.
Then there are the economic braceros who came to America to work in agricultural fields, sometimes with the US government’s blessing and other times without it. Those were followed by other Mexicans in search of opportunities. Then others followed from other countries like Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and many other countries from across the globe, including China and the Middle East. Each surging because of political instability or a natural catastrophe among other reasons.
There are also the natural born US citizens from Puerto Rico who are American citizens but are treated as foreigners by many fellow citizens because of a lack of education about the matters of citizenship, xenophobia or simply because they speak more Spanish than English.
Although being marginalized in America may seem a unifying shared cultural identity, most American Hispanics see marginalization as a way of life, but this does not provide them with a shared experience with their other Hispanic brethren.
It is this reality that makes a Latino voting bloc impossible in America politics.
The Democratic Party Divide: Older Versus Younger Democrats
It was the 2020 elections that got the Democrats excited about shoring up their support base with the fastest growing racial and ethnic group in America. Last year, Hispanics were almost 20% of the American population. It is this growth that excited many Democrats as the potential base for the party.
The Democrats suffer an age divide between the older more established leaders and the young Democrats entering their ranks. The age difference has divided the party. It is the Israel-Hamas War that brought the age divide clearly to the forefront. Younger Democrats are not as supportive of Israel as the older Democrats have been for years. It is the schism between the younger Democrats and their older counterparts that help to make Biden’s second term near impossible. It is this divide that likely kept many Democrats at home instead of voting, especially among the younger voters.
Nonetheless, in 2020 the Democrats believed that the Latino vote was going to bolster their ranks. An October 2020 national poll of Latinos by Univision seemed to bolster the belief that Latinos would rally behind the Democrats. According to the poll, 36% of those sampled were courted by the Democrats and 21% were approached by the Republicans. The Democrats tended to target the younger voters, those between 18 and 29, while the Republicans targeted the slightly older Hispanic voters, those 30 to 49 years old.
What is important to note about the 2020 poll is that when the Latino sample was asked what the most important issue for them was – removing the Coronavirus – it was lowering the costs of health care and wages and jobs. Only 10% cared about voting to “stopping Trump and the Republican agenda.”
When the Latino voters were asked who they would vote for in 2020, they generally favored the Democrats at 67%. However, what is important to note in the poll is how the Biden/Harris ticket favorability among the Hispanics fluctuated when broken down by state and by origin.
Cuban Americans favorability of Biden/Harris dropped to 54% as well as those from South American countries. It was the Puerto Ricans who favored the Biden/Harris ticket the highest with 71%.
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In 2020, political pundits arguing for the Latino vote estimated that 74% of the voters would cast a ballot. They did not. Only 54% voted. They were outperformed by Asian, Black and White voters and the “other” category.
However, the Latino showing at the polls increased from 16% in 2016 to 54% in 2020. Some analysts have argued that “Latino voters were decisive in sending” Biden to the Whitehouse in 2020. But the success of 2020 did not translate into 2024.
Donald Trump’s Latino Voters
Although the data is not yet complete, many are arguing that Trump’s victory earlier this month was bolstered by Latinos voting for him. “A record share of the vote” by Latinos is the news headline in many cases. According to the AP Projections, Trump outperformed George W. Bush with Latinos, as the voter projections suggest that Trump received 42% of the Latino vote. But surprisingly for the Democrats, it was “double digit gains in majority-Hispanic counties along the Mexico border in Texas” that has surprised the Democrats the most.
Along the border, in Horizon which counts a population of over 90% Hispanics, 36% of the voters voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Earlier this month, the number of Horizon voters voting for Trump jumped to 49.4%. Most significant is that Kamala Harris lost to Trump in the Horizon vote with 49.1% of the vote. Fourteen votes separated the two candidates with 95 Horizon voters voting for a third candidate.
El Paso’s Democratic Party officials were also shocked to learn how much of an inroad the Republicans had made into El Paso because it shattered the long-held belief that Latinos overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
What was motivating the Latinos to vote for Trump?
The Democrats refused to believe what the data was showing. Democrats have been losing the Hispanic vote steadily since 2012 when Latino voters were clearly moving away from the Democrats. What the Democrats seem to have not grasped is that the Latino voter is more concerned about the economy than the border, or their ethnicity.
Like in the 2020 elections, health care, jobs and the economy were more of a concern among Latinos in 2024 than border issues or the racist language from Trump. Basically, Hispanics in America follow their other ethnic counterparts when voting in national elections – the economy.
Mas deportations and racist language about their ethnicity does not seem to factor into their vote, especially among the younger male Hispanics.
The Democrats have been too reliant on Trump’s racist language and threats of deportation leading them to lose the Hispanic voters they had hoped would bolster their ranks. Moreover, it is this reality that shows that a unified Latino vote is impossible unless the unifying factor is the economy.
The issue of asylum for migrants and the idea of open borders were part of the national debate going into Election Day. Although it played a part in the election, it was the economy that dominated the national vote, including among the Latinos.
The El Paso Voter And The Self-Imposed Hispanic Label
It may be tempting to use the El Paso voter as a litmus test about America’s Hispanic voters because El Paso is overwhelmingly Latino and is one of the epicenters of immigration and border security – the fact remains that being Hispanic is a self-imposed label.
There is no official Hispanic label because ethnicity is self-identified especially among the Latino population. Official records confirm this as they ask respondents to self-identify as Hispanics. Even when choosing to identify as Hispanic, Latinos tend to subdivide themselves into subsections of Hispanics by choosing to identify themselves as Cuban American, Puerto Rican or Mexican American, for example. There are many other options to choose for self-identity.
El Paso is self-characterized as 81% Hispanic, but it is important to understand that this is a selection made by choice. The Hispanic ethnicity includes the White and Black races as well the indigenous populations. Hispanics have a diverse cultural and demographic identity that makes it difficult to conclusively identify what Hispanic in America is.
Looking at the voter rolls in the last election and noting that Trump’s voter turnout increased to around 42% in 2024 one may assume that Latinos moved towards Trump because of El Paso’s ethnicity makeup. However, it is impossible to know if the uptick in Trump voters came from Latinos in El Paso because it is not known who voted for Trump. Not knowing that, any assumption that El Paso Hispanics voted for Trump is at best a guess, but can be erroneous as well.
Is it possible that El Paso’s Hispanics voted for Trump? Yes, as supported by anecdotal evidence as demonstrated by the rise of Trump paraphernalia across El Paso.
National evidence supports the theory that El Paso Hispanics navigated towards the Republicans in this election cycle. First, it is understanding that border security and immigration were not a significant motivator for Hispanics across the nation as supported by exit data.
In addition, there is the firsthand account of why Latinos would vote for Trump over Biden.
Understanding the motivation of Hispanic Trump voters further dispels the myth of the Latino vote. The assumption is that Hispanics would gravitate towards defending migrants because most Hispanics have family trees that include immigrants coming to America, both legally and as undocumented. Having a family member that can be deported under Trump’s mass deportation threat does not seem to influence the Hispanic voters because like other American voters, Latinos have resorted to the “them versus us” psychology to decide on who they vote for.
American Latinos’ own immigration history had become different from the new arrivals arriving in their communities, whether legal migration or as undocumented migrants. The new arrivals were seen as competitors to those who had arrived before.
Former Mexican immigrants that had arrived in the US decades before now resented the new arrivals. Take Rosa, for example. She is an undocumented Mexican immigrant who has lived in Whitewater since she crossed the border 30 years before.
Rosa is not concerned about being deported because, according to her, “Trump wants to deport criminals, not people like her who crossed the border undetected in the 1990s but haven’t gotten in trouble with the law.”
What differentiates Rosa from the newly arrived migrants, according to her, is that the new arrivals have received work permits and driver’s licenses through the asylum process and she, has not received either in 30 years of working as an undocumented immigrant in the country.
For Rosa and her friends, the issue is not being deported but because of the unfairness of the system that keeps her marginalized while the new migrants receive the benefit of work permits and drivers licenses that has been denied to her for 30 years.
“It’s not fair,” she told ProPublica recently.
And she blames the Democrats for failing the migrants that have been in the country for decades. Although Rosa blames the Democrats for “failing to produce meaningful reforms to the immigration system,” the fact remains that both parties have failed to address immigration for decades. In a binary system – Democrats versus Republicans – the voters can choose only one and because of that, the Republicans benefited from a broken system because there was no other choice. The Democrats failed to accept that reality.
The Democrats had hoped to win the support of the migrants. Although Rosa is not able to vote, but two of Rosa’s children voted for Trump, and she was glad they did.
The Democrats banked on easing asylum seekers into the country as proof they were immigrant friendly but what they did instead was to create resentment among the immigrants already in the country, leading Democrats to lose Latino votes in this election cycle.
The resentment against Biden and the Democrats among Latinos because of the immigration system shows that a Latino vote cannot exist because America’s Hispanics are just like other American voters, when it comes to them versus the others, they will choose what they perceive to be better for them, regardless of the political rhetoric.
Ultimately it is the economy. Bill Clinton won on the phrase, it is “the economy, stupid,” understanding that ultimately America’s voters, including the Hispanic voters, will vote on the economy over all the other issues, manufactured or not. That is what the Democrats have failed to grasp.