Democrats had the same problem with Hispanic voters as they did with the rest of the working class

By Herbert Rothschild

In 2015, when I was publishing Relocations in the Daily Tidings, in a column about affirmative action I wrote, “Any major economic enterprise or political party that won’t voluntarily and convincingly diversify itself is writing its death warrant. The Republican Party is the most important U.S. institution that’s ignoring this reality. When Texas goes blue, Republicans will finally get it.”

I went on to say, “That reversal probably will happen by the 2024 Presidential election. The Texas State Data Center projects that by 2025 Anglos (non-Hispanic whites) will make up 39 percent of the state’s population, Hispanics 42 percent, Blacks 11 percent, and Others 7 percent. Without Texas, the party of white men and Christian fundamentalist women cannot put together a majority in the electoral college.”

It turned out that my prediction was wrong. Not about the demographics. The projection upon which I relied was rather accurate. By 2024 the racial/ethnic makeup was Anglos 37% Hispanics 40%, Blacks 12%, Asians 6% and Others 5%. The false assumption I made was that Hispanics would continue voting Democratic by the large margins historically they had voted.

In the 2016 election, the historic trend held. Hillary Clinton got 61% of the Hispanic vote in Texas to Donald Trump’s 34%. By 2020 the trend had begun to change: Biden 58%, Trump 41%. The reversal was complete by 2024: Trump 55%, Harris 45%.  (Note: these data are approximate, based on exit polls and surveys, but they tell the story.)

Nationally, Democrats did modestly better than they did in Texas, but the same trend was evident. In 2016, Clinton got 66% of the Hispanic vote to Trump’s 28%. In 2020, it was Biden 61%, Trump 36%, and in 2024 it was Harris 51%, Trump 48%.

When I wrote the column in 2015. I thought that the relative youth of Hispanics in Texas compared to a rapidly aging Anglo population boded well for Democrats. Unfortunately for Democrats, the biggest erosion of loyalty over the last three election cycles has been among younger Hispanic voters in Texas, especially males. So unless Democrats can figure out a way to reverse the trend, it will accelerate.

Well, what went wrong?

Before I share some explanations people have put forward, it’s important to note that Hispanics residing in the U.S. aren’t a homogeneous population. Of the nearly 30 million who were eligible to vote in 2020, 60% were Mexican American, 13% Puerto Ricans living in the States, about 8% Central American, 5% Cuban American, 3% Dominican American, and the rest originally from other Caribbean and South American countries.

Historically, Cuban Americans have been far more Republican than the other groups. In their home country they were the haves; they fled a leftist revolution that deprived them of their privileged status. Given their concentration in Florida, Cuban Americans have had a disproportionate impact on national elections. The large majority of other Hispanic Americans, however, were have-nots. They immigrated to better their economic conditions and/or to find refuge from right-wing tyrannies, or both.  

Because most Hispanic Americans were poor at home and are mostly still making their way in the U.S., the political party that seemed to favor working people won their loyalty. For a long time that was the Democratic Party. The single best explanation for the reversal I’ve been focusing on is that it’s a consequence of the more general perception that the Democratic Party abandoned its championship of working people.

That perception was well-founded. The abandonment began in 1977 and ended only with President Joe Biden, who, along with influential members of Congress like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, tried his best to relocate the party in the FDR-Truman-Johnson tradition.

Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization for Hispanic Americans, said right after the 2024 election that Trump’s messaging on the economy resonated with Latinos.

“I think it’s important to say that Latinos [had] a significant impact in deciding who the next president was going to be and reelected Donald Trump. (Latino) men certainly responded to the populist message of the president and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support of immigration reform.”

The AP article that quoted Proaño also quoted Alexis Uscanga, a 20-year-old college student from Brownville, Texas.

“Everything just got a lot more expensive than it once was for me,” Uscanga said. “Gas, grocery shopping, even as a college student, everything has gone up in price and that is a big concern for me and other issues like immigration.”

That immigration wasn’t a losing policy issue for Trump among Hispanic voters in Texas might seem, on its face, hard to believe. True, he said awful things about people crossing the border from Mexico. But many saw the newcomers as competitive for unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. They also worried about drug violence. Some of the biggest voting shifts occurred in counties in the Rio Grande Valley.

Another factor to note was Trump’s projection of himself as a strong leader, helped by the contrast with a doddering incumbent. That image played well with Hispanic men generally and young Hispanic men especially. The gender gap among Hispanic voters was as pronounced as it was in the general electorate.

The good news for Democrats is that sentiment has begun to turn back. Global Strategy Group conducted an online and text-to-web bilingual survey of 800 nationwide Hispanic/Latino registered voters between Aug. 26 and Sept. 4. Comparison with results from the surveys it conducted between Feb. 20-27 and May 8-18 showed that Hispanic voters are defecting from Trump across all demographics.

Fifty-nine percent of Hispanic voters have an unfavorable view of President Trump, while only 39% approve. In February, 55% of Hispanic voters had an unfavorable view of Trump, while 43% viewed him as favorable. The largest defection has been by Hispanic voters between 18 and 29. The study showed that they viewed Trump unfavorably by 34 points in September, compared with 11 points in February. These reversals are mainly because of disappointed economic expectations.

While the Democratic Party needs to implement some messaging strategies specific to Hispanic voters, it must understand that this challenge is part of its larger challenge to break decisively with the neoliberalism of the Clintons and Barack Obama and once again champion economic equity instead of just funding the safety net. It must tax the rich at the pre-Ronald Reagan levels, correct the imbalance between military and social spending, raise the federal minimum wage to $15, adopt universal public health coverage and make college affordable again.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].