Democrats lose the Latino vote

Some Latino voters shifted towards Trump, showing how the Democrats' failures have left voters feeling betrayed

Some Latino voters felt betrayed by Kamala Harris and the Democrats

Latino voters shifting away from the Democrats boosted Donald Trump’s victory on Wednesday.

But why did Trump gain Latino voters? And how true is the media’s hype? The BBC reported that Latino American “flocked to Trump”.

The Washington Post newspaper reported that “Latino voters delivered big” for Trump’s republicans. “They giving the party arguably its best-ever numbers at the presidential level and hinting at a lasting political realignment,” it said.

More than half of Latino voters still backed Kamala Harris, according to a survey by the Associated Press agency.

But that was below the roughly 60 percent who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election—itself a decline on previous elections.

In 2016 Latino voters supported Hillary Clinton by a margin of 38 percentage points. By 2020 Biden’s margin had shrunk to 33 points. Harris’s margin of victory among Latino American voters collapsed to just eight percentage points.

The way the media talks of “Latino voters” assumes there is unity of interests among people of the same background.

But there are different class interests and sharp divisions over political issues, such as immigration, abortion rights or Palestine.

For example, Latino men swung from voting for Biden by 23 percentage points in 2020 to voting for Trump by 10 points this year. But Latino women voted for Harris by 24 points—a divide most likely over abortion rights.

Latino evangelical groups have organised against abortion rights and LGBT+ rights and encouraged support for Trump’s bigotry.

Many Latino migrants have fled from areas with high crime rates and can buy into Trump’s claims to be a defender of law and order.

Counties with large Cuban populations swung the furthest away from Democrats. “Republicans have weaponised the fear of socialism and communism, especially in Florida,” says Paola Ramos, author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America.

Daniel Campo, a Venezuelan-American, said Trump’s claims of creeping “socialism” worried him as he left Venezuela out of opposition to its government.

He also bought in to scapegoating of undocumented migrants, saying, “I came the right way.” “I understand why migrants are leaving,” he said. “But you have to do it the right way. Things have to be done legally.

“Many of us were worried that the borders were just open under the Biden-Harris administration”.

That’s a Trump lie. The Biden administration continued deporting migrants—and Harris criticised Trump for being too soft on immigration during the campaign.

Migrants who feel precarious and insecure can be turned against further immigration, which they are told will make their status less secure. And Latino people who aren’t recent migrants can buy into Trump’s racism.

Democratic supporter Eric Garcia described his parents’ political affiliation as Republican and Democrat. “At least on my mom’s side, our family moved here 100 years ago,” he wrote in the Independent newspaper.

“This was before there was such a thing as legal and illegal immigration. According to my late grandmother, her parents paid just a penny to cross the US-Mexico border.

“It’s not to say we didn’t care about the issue. But it was more that it was in the rear-view mirror for us.

“For decades, Democrats have banked on the idea that Latinos will vote for them reflexively because Latinos would see Republican language about immigration as inherently racist.

“But the results from last night show this is simply not true. Survey after survey shows that Latinos vote more with their pocketbooks than on immigration.”

Latino voters were more likely than other groups to say the economy is their most important issue. They punished the Democrats for their economic record. Samuel Negron, a Puerto Rican Trump supporter from Pennsylvania, said, “We like the ways things were four years ago. Out here, you pay $5 for eggs.

“It used to be $1 or even 99 cents. A lot of us have woken up from Democratic lies that things have got better.”

Latinos make up 18.4 percent of the US population and 17.3 percent of the US labour force. This is forecast to rise more than 30 percent by 2060. They experience discrimination.

Latinos make just 73 cents for every dollar earned by White Americans. They struggle with access to food, housing, and other essentials. And their level of household wealth is just one-fifth that of White Americans. Covid had a disproportionate impact on Latino lives and livelihoods.

The Democrats have assumed that minorities will keep voting for them, while the party offers less and less, because they have nowhere else to go.

One liberal writer from the New York Times says, “One particular bit of data from the exit polls is that Trump’s share of the vote among Latinos appears to have grown from about a third to nearly half.

“If that is true, that blows a hole in the whole idea of reliable minority coalitions. As a civil rights activist told me tonight, “It’s time to put to bed this magical thinking around people of colour solidarity.”

A class politics, which gives an alternative to the cost of living crisis and rejects racist scapegoating, could cut through.

Latino workers have a proud tradition of fighting for safety at work, for a living wage, and against racism.

Latino agricultural workers have organised against giant corporations including Del Monte. A Latino woman, Emma Tenayuca, led a strike by 12,000 Pecan Shellers which lasted for 3 months in 1938. They won a minimum wage.

In the early 1960s, Civil Rights activists and organisers Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers. The union played an important role in securing better working conditions in the agricultural sector—in which Latinos disproportionately are employed. They won protections for workers against the harms of heat and pesticides.

From the late 1980s, the Justice for Janitors movement achieved better pay, greater access to benefits, and union contracts for many when domestic outsourcing began to undermine working conditions. Janitorial services is an occupation in which Latinos represent almost a third of the overall workforce.

More recently, the California Labor Federation helped to improve working conditions for fast-food workers in California.

Latino workers have given their support to the Democrats for generations. Democrats have betrayed their support. They offered no solutions and drove many into Trump’s arms.