{"id":14785,"date":"2025-11-12T18:35:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14785"},"modified":"2025-11-12T18:35:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:35:54","slug":"has-trump-already-lost-the-latino-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14785","title":{"rendered":"Has Trump already lost the Latino vote?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jonah Goldberg<\/a>, LA Times<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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For generations, foreign policy eggheads debated the question, \u201cWho lost China?\u201d<\/u><\/a> I\u2019m wondering if election analysts might soon ask, \u201cWho lost Latinos?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost exactly one year ago, President Trump won an impressive election victory. It wasn\u2019t the landslide <\/u>that <\/u>boosters claim<\/u><\/a>, but it was decisive. And Trump\u2019s record-breaking success with Latino voters played a crucial part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Joe Biden won Latinos by nearly <\/u>2 to <\/u>1 (61% to 36%)<\/u><\/a>. Four years later, Trump nearly tied Vice President Kamala Harris for the Latino vote (Harris 51% to Trump 48%). He won Latino men by 10 points (54 to 44) \u2014 a 33-point<\/u><\/a> swing in his favor from 2020, according to Edison Research. Along with an impressive showing with Black men, the results led many Republicans to claim the GOP was reborn. \u201cThe Republican Party is now a multiethnic, multiracial coalition of hardworking Americans who love their country,\u201d then-Sen. Marco Rubio proclaimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how Trump put it in his victory speech: \u201cThey came from \u2026 all quarters. Union, nonunion, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American, we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense. You know, we\u2019re the party of common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In typical fashion, Trump overstated things (Harris won eight in 10 Black votes, roughly six in 10 Asian votes, and union voters broke narrowly for Harris). Still, Trump had every reason to celebrate. Republicans have wanted to gain traction with Latino and Black voters for decades and Trump made serious inroads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to every poll, the overriding priority for Latino voters was the economy. COVID and inflation hit working class Latinos very hard and nostalgia for the pre-pandemic Trump economy ran high. Trump\u2019s immigration rhetoric focused on deporting criminal gangs and shutting down the border, moves that Latinos saw as common sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump campaign\u2019s most effective ad ran a video of Harris vowing to support taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants in federal detention. The tagline: \u201cShe\u2019s for they\/them. President Trump is for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ad was controversial for being \u201canti-trans\u201d but that wasn\u2019t its appeal. It was the message that Harris cared too much about boutique ideological activist causes, not the \u201ccommon sense\u201d concerns of regular voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward one year, and Latinos are in a very different place than they hoped. For the first time, a majority of Latinos (65%) say it\u2019s a \u201cbad time<\/u><\/a>\u201d to be Latino in America (though only 38% of Republican Latinos agree). Slightly more than half say they fear for their physical safety and believe that all Latinos \u2014 regardless of citizenship status \u2014 are targets of Trump\u2019s deportation efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the recent off-year elections, Latinos swung massively<\/u><\/a> back toward Democrats<\/u><\/a>, more than erasing<\/u><\/a> GOP gains a year ago. It\u2019s worth noting that these voters still said that their top concern was the economy, not Trump\u2019s immigration policies. Though one does wonder how many voters, worried about being wrongly detained, didn\u2019t risk showing up at the polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the modern era, the single biggest mistake political parties make is overreading the election returns. The Trump-led GOP is particularly guilty. Every time Trump does something outrageous, self-indulgent or just weird, his biggest fans declare, \u201cI voted for this.<\/u><\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That may be true for them, but it\u2019s not true for the majority-making swing voters who took a flier on Trump based on economic concerns or frustration with Democrats. When a Latino truck driver sees a video<\/u><\/a> of a Latino mother arrested while picking up her kid from daycare, it doesn\u2019t take a genius to understand he\u2019s probably not saying, \u201cThis is what I voted for.\u201d Ditto the endless pardons of crooked cronies, the surprise demolition of the East Wing or the tariff-driven chaos working its way through the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s pride in the diversity of his coalition was understandable, but didn\u2019t account for the fact his coalition was diverse in its reasons<\/em> for voting for him. Not every Trump voter is a MAGA diehard. The \u201cI voted for this\u201d crowd isn\u2019t a majority. The rest increasingly feel like he\u2019s for him<\/em> not us \u2014<\/em> which is why Trump\u2019s approval rating is in \u201cfree fall.\u201d<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump-pushed redistricting effort in Texas was based on the idea that working-class Latinos were as locked in for Trump as the billionaire attendees of his Great Gatsby party at Mar-a-Lago. If current trends continue \u2014 still a big if \u2014 Democrats could gain<\/em> Texas seats in the midterms. One in five Texas Latinos who voted for Trump say they regret<\/u><\/a> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate over \u201cWho lost Latinos?\u201d is looming on the horizon, though it won\u2019t be hard to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

X: <\/em>@JonahDispatch<\/u><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Jonah Goldberg, LA Times For generations, foreign policy eggheads debated the question, “Who lost China?” I’m wondering if election analysts might soon ask, “Who lost Latinos?” Almost exactly one year ago, President Trump won […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,70],"tags":[94,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-14785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"category-latino-vote","9":"tag-2026-midterms","10":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14789,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785\/revisions\/14789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}