How Latinos Elected Trump
On November 5th, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump prevailed over his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. In a historic comeback, Trump will return to the White House as one of only two Republicans to win the popular vote since 1992. Propelling his victory was an otherwise unlikely group of voters—Hispanic and Latino Americans. According to exit polls, Trump garnered around 46 percent of the Latino vote including an outright majority of Latino men.
For Democratic pundits, the development represents an incomprehensible turnaround for a man who began his political career by railing against illegal immigration from Mexico. In the same vein, Trump’s overperformance with Latinos belies the GOP narrative of Democrats “importing voters in order to win elections.” The fundamental flaw of each of these readings is the supposition that Latinos—or any other individuals from various demographic groups—lack agency in their political decisions.
In reality, Latinos are disproportionately working-class voters. According to Pew, around 79 percent of Hispanics lack college degrees. Unsurprisingly, it’s a group that has seen itself drawn both to the populist Donald Trump and his left-wing counterpart Bernie Sanders. At heart, Latinos are an eminently populist constituency for an eminently populist moment. Unfortunately for Democrats, the party mostly relegated the material concerns of Latino voters and instead elevated mostly unpopular priorities from both its centrist and progressive wings.
Like other working-class voters, Latinos generally favor stricter policies against crime and are more likely to cite public safety as an electoral concern. This is, in part, because a greater share of Hispanics live in urban areas and are thus more exposed to crime and the broader maladies of progressive governance. In a stunning rebuke of the failed experiment of California’s Prop 47—which reclassified crimes such as shoplifting as misdemeanors—around 70 percent of California Latinos supported reinstating felony charges for purportedly “non-violent” crimes. It was, in fact, then Attorney General Kamala Harris who authored Proposition 47 in 2014—and later declined to back 2024’s Proposition 36 which stiffened penalties for drug and other crimes. Tellingly, Democrats’ advantage among California Latinos in this election declined by a very substantial 18 points relative to Biden’s performance in 2020.
By far the most resounding issue where Democrats facilitated their own demise with Latinos—and the broader public—was on immigration. In 2020, the share of voters that favored increased immigration rose to a 50-year high of 34 percent—in large part as a backlash to Trump’s immigration policies. In a severe overcorrection, the Biden administration more or less decriminalized border crossings in 2021 through an overly generous asylum regime. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that more than 10 million foreign nationals without legal permanent status entered the United States during Biden’s term. Consequently, the number of Americans that now favor decreased immigration has risen to a record high of 55 percent.
Here, it’s important to note that opposition towards illegal immigration has been comparatively stable—and even more resounding—including among Latinos. One poll found that 65 percent of Latinos backed stopping illegal immigration entirely. Mired with the sheer unpopularity of his policies, Biden issued an executive order in June barring migrants from soliciting asylum after daily border encounters exceed 2500. In practical terms, the move was a resounding success with monthly crossings falling by around 80 percent since December 2023 in conjunction with increased enforcement by Mexican authorities.
The sad reality for Democrats, however, is that the move came too little too late. Given years of chaos at the border—and its associated costs in areas like housing and wages—previously loyal Latinos defected to Trump over immigration. This was further compounded by the fact that the party could not campaign on taking decisive action on the border for fear of alienating its college-educated base. For perspective, the pro-immigration Financial Times found that over 80 percent of white progressives agreed that “immigration to the US should be made easier” compared to just 30 percent of Latinos.
The final nail in the Democratic coffin came from the party’s resolute inability to champion progressive causes that garner actual votes. At a time when the federal minimum wage has lost close to half of its value due to inflation, the party ceded to its corporate wing—which favors curtailing inflation through lower wages. According to Pew, 79 percent of Latinos favor increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour—a logical finding considering that large shares of Hispanics earn at or close to the minimum wage.
Even in high minimum wage California—where an amendment to further increase the minimum wage appears to have narrowly failed—the class divide within the Democratic coalition continues to be stark. Around 53 percent of Latino and 56 percent of voters earning less than $40,000 a year backed the minimum wage amendment compared to 42 percent of whites and 40 percent of those earning over $100,000. In states with historically low minimum wages such as Florida and Missouri, Latinos have been decisive in their support for similar amendments.
This isn’t to say that the entirety of the Biden agenda—most notably with regard to unions, industrial, and antitrust policy—will not redound to the benefit of workers, Latinos included. But at best, these are mostly long-term, technocratic gains at a time when housing and grocery prices have skyrocketed. Instead of actually cracking down on corporate price gouging, banning private equity from home sales, or augmenting the Affordable Care Act with a public insurance option, Democrats funneled billions of dollars into questionable energy policies, student debt forgiveness, and prolonged military support for wars in Europe and the Middle East. Many Hispanic voters took notice of these priorities and looked for an alternative.
On energy, much like immigration, neither Biden nor Harris chose to tout record oil production—mostly from licenses granted under Trump—for fear of alienating affluent progressives. On repeated occasions, Biden ceded to the demands of climate hawks such as nixing the Keystone XL Pipeline despite a global energy crisis. Had the administration instead pursued an agenda of energy abundance, it’s certain that much more of the pain from post pandemic supply shocks would have been mitigated.
It is, after all, the progressive pretext of imminent climate apocalypse that has led to exorbitant energy costs in blue states—the very same that hurt working-class voters the most. When I spoke with the Venezuelan-American Raul after having moved to Florida from San Francisco, he explained that the cost of traveling to and from work as well as taking his kids to school “nearly bankrupted” his family.
Confronted with the most unpopular aspects of Democratic centrism and progressivism, it’s not hard to understand why so many Latinos turned to Trump over both pocketbook and cultural issues. Lacking a clear agenda and promising policies that most voters likely regarded as outright lies, the core promises of the Trump campaign were comparatively coherent to many voters: reduce immigration and lower prices.
Indeed, in my reporting, the most common answer I heard from Latino voters was that Trump would do a better job of reducing inflation than Kamala Harris. One 20-something Biden voter of Costa Rican origin explained to me how he disliked Trump but felt that the economy was better during his presidency. He also appreciated Trump’s willingness to sit down with podcasters such as Joe Rogan and described Kamala Harris as elitist for not doing the same. Still another Mexican-American voter I spoke with resented the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to hold competitive primaries and likened the media narrative on Trump’s authoritarianism with that of Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
At minimum, Trump’s overperformance in relation to other Republicans speaks to his strengths as a populist—a quality he shares with many of his peers in the Americas such as the friendly AMLO.
It’s worth considering whether the politician that most resembles a Latin American leader has a unique appeal among Latinos. In the same way that populism is the defining characteristic of Latin American politics, the core of Trump’s appeal is his populism. This is also to say that the political reality of the U.S. increasingly resembles that of Latin America.
In recent decades, the egalitarianism of New Deal America has decayed into the atomized, elitist, and unequal society of the present. In this environment, the essence of populism is one that challenges the sensibilities of a genteel and credentialed—if not always economic—elite.
In some cases, this improves the quality of democracies by incorporating previously ignored voter concerns. In other cases it empowers questionable demagogues and/or fringe extremists. In yet another subset of cases, ostensibly respectable elites resort to questionable tactics such as lawfare or censorship in order to oppose populist opponents. To varying degrees, Trump and Trumpism have prompted a combination of these scenarios.
Seen through a hemispheric lens, the president-elect is a seminal populist and the perfect archetype of a Latin American conservative. Since 2000, 15 of the region’s 26 right-wing presidents have been wealthy tycoons like Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, many of the president-elect’s Latino voters—like many of his Latin American admirers—credit his business acumen as a factor for his economic management.
And yet, Trump’s brand of right-wing populism is unique relative to his conservative peers in the Americas. In several important ways, his views often align more closely with left populists. This is most evident with regards to trade where Trump is the region’s solitary protectionist on the right. By comparison, the “Argentine Trump” Javier Milei, considers tariffs to be dangerous distortions of market freedom—in stark contrast to the “Tariff King” Trump.
In an October interview with Bloomberg News, editor-in-chief John Micklethwait scolded the former president for his controversial tariff plans. In typical fashion, Trump noted the benefits of protecting American industry and countered: “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs and have someone explain to you that you’re wrong”. For all the talk of Brazil’s “Trump of the Tropics” or Argentina’s “Trump of the Pampas,” both Bolsonaro and Milei remain closer to Micklethwait on trade than the real Donald Trump.
The irony is that the Biden administration has been, if anything, more protectionist than its Trumpian predecessor. In 2022, Biden issued sweeping restrictions on the sale of semiconductors to China prompting the resignation of dozens of industry CEOs. Then in May, the president slapped 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs. The political genius here of Trump’s maximalism on tariffs—such as imposing a 10 percent tariff on all imports—is that it distracted Democrats from proposing an alternative or championing their own record protecting domestic workers. Unsurprisingly, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 56 percent of voters favored Trump's tariff plan, although other polls report more mixed sentiments toward his plans.
In Latin America, protectionist policies are similarly popular in large part because of the overwhelming elitism of free trade opponents. Tune in to financial coverage of Gustavo Petro’s Colombia or Lula’s Brazil, and you’ll encounter pundits using identical Democratic Party talking points on the harms of tariffs. Like Trump, AMLO and Petro campaigned on renegotiating unfair trade deals such as NAFTA and the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement; Trump and AMLO later renegotiated NAFTA into the more worker-friendly USMCA—a development which allegedly kindled an enduring friendship.
Unlike Biden or Harris moreover, “radical leftists” like Lula actively champion their defense of workers from foreign competition. Here it’s worth noting that neither Bolsonaro nor Milei would even consider comparable rhetoric—let alone actionable policy—on the subject. The same can be said of central bankers’ job-killing propensity for high interest rates that have elicited ire from both Lula and Trump.
Impressive as the president-elect’s gains may be, Republicans should exercise prudence when evaluating an enduring “multiracial working class” realignment. Just as the Democratic Party has hobbled itself with unpopular immigration, energy, and social policies, the Republican Party remains firmly wedded to comparably unpopular positions on labor, big business, and abortion.
The optimistic scenario for the coming years is that a more ideologically flexible Republican Party retains or further expands its working-class support. This could be done by adopting a coherent pro-labor agenda through the promotion of collective bargaining and related reforms such as restricting just-in-time scheduling—a major impediment to parents’ ability to care for their children.
Similarly, a reformed Democratic Party might view GOP gains with Latinos as an incentive to resuscitate the party’s historical pro-labor position against mass, unskilled immigration. It could also embrace popular pro-labor reforms such as the PRO Act while simultaneously repudiating progressive maximalism towards criminal justice and the energy transition.
Sadly, a more realistic scenario is that neither party enacts meaningful reforms to their platforms and thus continue to prevail by default. Democrats have offered scant self-criticism while Republicans seem all too likely to provoke a comparable backlash on issues such as immigration and tax cuts for top earners. Faced with the prospect of lower turnout and an energized opposition, it’s quite likely that even the most identity-driven variant of the Democratic Party will succeed in retaking the House of Representatives in 2026.
Relative to other Republicans, Trump’s heterodoxy has translated into unique strengths among specific voters—namely Latinos, non-college, and union households. But this appeal by no means translates into resounding popular support—and speaks poorly of the rest of the GOP.
With virtually all ballots counted, Trump’s “landslide” win amounts to just under 50 percent of the vote compared to Kamala Harris’ 48.3 percent. While largely forgotten, in 2004, Republicans also won the popular vote and an almost identical share of Latinos under then president George W. Bush. Then as now, the sad reality is that most Americans—including Latinos—largely despise both political parties and their respective leaders.
In his notable campaign appearance in Pennsylvania as a McDonald’s worker, the president-elect dodged a question as to whether or not he would raise the minimum wage. On Election Day, I spoke with Karla, a low-wage worker of Ecuadorian descent and an enthusiastic Trump supporter. When I asked what she hoped for from a second Trump term, she responded in Spanish: “Espero que mi presidente suba el salario mínimo | I hope that my president raises the minimum wage.”
As in 2016, Donald Trump has been given yet another opportunity to upend American politics—ideally for the better. It will remain to be seen whether he listens to his newest working-class Latino voters to find the path forward.
Juan David Rojas is a South Florida-based columnist for Compact magazine, covering the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. He is also a contributor to American Affairs.
Thank you for common sense!
Excellent analysis of one of the biggest ironies in American history, namely that Democrats imported the very people who voted against them and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so.