Most Latinos still vote for Democrats, but the results of this election suggest that, as a bloc, this rapidly growing segment of the electorate — now about 20% of the population — continues to slowly shift to the right.
The results from Tuesday (5) also suggest that many Latinos share Trump’s concerns about illegal immigration, despite the racist rhetoric he uses to describe undocumented Latinos and falsely blame them for rising crime in some cities.
By winning in Florida, Trump garnered over 54% of the votes in Miami-Dade County, which is predominantly Latino.
Hillary Clinton won that county with 63% of the votes in 2016, and President Biden won with 53% in 2020.
In Hidalgo County, in South Texas — a Mexican-American stronghold that Biden won with 58% of the votes in 2020 — Vice President Harris and Trump were virtually tied on Wednesday (6), with Harris leading by less than half a percentage point.
In Cameron County, at the southern tip of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, Trump led Harris 52-47, according to early results. Biden won the county with 56% of the votes four years ago.
Central California also serves as an indicator of how Latinos are shifting their politics.
In 2020, Biden won Fresno County, where nearly 55% of the population is Hispanic, by 8 points over Trump.
Trump was leading Harris by about 4 percentage points on Wednesday, with nearly half of the votes counted.
Harris won in California but underperformed compared to Biden’s numbers in 2020 in several other heavily Latino areas — including Merced County, where 64% of the population is Latino.
Overall, Trump secured the support of 45% of Latino voters nationally, compared to 53% for Harris. This is a much better performance than in 2020, when he garnered 32% against 65% for Joe Biden. It could end up being the strongest performance by Republicans among Latinos in a presidential race since George W. Bush won 44% in 2004.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is Cuban-American, defeated Congressman Colin Allred and dedicated several minutes of his victory speech to Hispanic voters.
Cruz said he spent many months in the predominantly Latino Rio Grande Valley, learning that “our Hispanic communities are not just leaving the Democratic Party — they are coming home, to conservative values they never left.”
Source: Axios