The list of horrific and harmful remarks president-elect Donald Trump has made about Latines, and especially Latine immigrants, in the United States is extensive: He’s called Mexicans drug mules and rapists. He spread a racist lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating domesticated pets. He seeks the support of people like comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who opened Trump’s Madison Square Garden October 27 rally calling Puerto Rico a “pile of garbage.” And, beyond rhetoric, he has proposed policies that would strip naturalized citizens of their status, usher in the greatest mass deportations of immigrants in U.S. history, and end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Yet, Latine support for Trump is at an all-time high, helping him win the presidential election on November 5.
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While Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris still won the majority of the Latine vote with 53%, Trump fared far better than he has in the past with the demographic. An NBC News Exit poll found that the 47th president had 45% of the support of Latine voters, up 11% from 2020. Republican support among Latines hasn’t been as high in a presidential race since George W. Bush won 44% in 2004. While Latines account for 12% of the electorate, their presence and voting shifts in battleground states like Arizona and Pennsylvania helped secure Trump's win.
Trump has made the biggest gains with Latine men. Of this specific demographic, 54% voted for Trump compared to previous years where they backed Democratic nominees like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Among them were popular Latine artists like Anuel and Justin Quiles, who urged their millions of followers to also back the Republican nominee. Puerto Rican-Dominican rapper Nicky Jam initially endorsed the president-elect as well, saying he supported Trump because he believed he’d help the U.S. economy (he later rescinded his support after Hinchcliffe’s jab at Puerto Ricans). But the sentiment is worth noting as it’s one that’s shared by many Latino men who voted for Trump. According to a September NBC News poll, Latine voters overall sided with Trump on the economy, inflation, and securing the border, but tended to support Harris on all other issues, including abortion access and crime reduction as well as believing she has the temperament and ability to move the country in the right direction.
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"Latine voters overall sided with Trump on the economy, inflation, and securing the border, but tended to support Harris on all other issues, including abortion access and crime reduction as well as believing she has the temperament and ability to move the country in the right direction."
raquel reichard
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Most Latina voters did not share their counterparts' views at the polls. In fact, the gender gap between Latine voters this election was larger than any other racial or ethnic voting bloc. Still, while 61% of Latinas voted for Harris, the Trump campaign made gains with this demographic as well. In 2020 and 2016, Democratic presidential nominees secured 69% of the Latina vote. While it’s too early to say if that 8% of women all voted red, it’s a significant drop that can’t be ignored. For their part, the Trump campaign targeted Latina voters with million-dollar campaign ads that tapped into their cultural identities and some of their anxieties around communism and socialism. Even more, Trump’s deputy Hispanic communications director, Vianca Rodriguez, campaigned in English and Spanish both online and on TV to increase Latinas’ support for Trump.
The reasons behind the rise in GOP support among Latinas, even if minimal, are varied. As Somos has reported in the past, Latinas, and Latines overall, are not a monolith. Arriving from a vastly diverse region, Latinas come in different races, immigration statuses, classes, faiths, and lived experiences.
According to Dr. Vanessa Cruz-Nichols, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, evangelical Latinas have historically been more likely to support conservative candidates. “The percentage of Latina women that are moving to the far right is far smaller and not as specifically robust as Latino men leaning toward Trump,” Cruz-Nichols tells Somos. “Where he has gained some Latino women, it's within the evangelical movement, evangelical Christian churches. And when we think about women that supported Trump in 2016, it was typically within that evangelical wing, which has to do with more socially conservative views, regarding gender, regarding marriage, [and] regarding reproductive rights.”
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"The percentage of Latina women that are moving to the far right is far smaller and not as specifically robust as Latino men leaning toward Trump. Where he has gained some Latino women, it's within the evangelical movement."
Dr. Vanessa Cruz-Nichols
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The evangelical Latina demographic is particularly vulnerable to misinformation (unknowingly spreading false information) and disinformation (deliberately and manipulatively sharing false information), which generally reinforces the socially conservative beliefs they already hold. According to a 2022 survey by Equis, Latines who already support the Republican Party are likely to believe fake news about the Democratic Party. Much of the misinformation and disinformation targeted to evangelical Latinas this election year through Facebook and WhatsApp was around abortion, including falsehoods that the Democratic ticket supported late-term abortions, even killing babies, and that a Democratic president would restore Roe v. Wade (codifying Roe would require legislation passed by a divided Congress).
In a way, the disinformation that is radicalizing Latina women — or reinforcing their already conservative views — and a growing conservative political landscape are elements that transcend borders. Many Latines who are conservative in the U.S. come from countries where similar right-wing demagogues were elected in the last decade. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina are two examples of right-wing leaders that used disinformation, fear-mongering, and anti-Black and anti-Indigenous rhetoric to get themselves elected.
“There is a universal movement for sure, the platform and focus on messaging regarding gender roles, regarding gender expressions, gender identities, the sanctity of marriage — I think that's a universal thing,” Dr. Cruz-Nichols says. “We're seeing some women [in Latin America] supporting very conservative figures who are reminding them that the social structure of the family is being threatened by incredibly woke and super liberal radical opponents. So maybe there is a more universal kind of explanation there, with religiosity among those that are more socially conservative, and why they might support male figures that are actually wanting to create more theocracies in their countries.”
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"The disinformation that is radicalizing Latina women — or reinforcing their already conservative views — and a growing conservative political landscape are elements that transcend borders."
nicole froio
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But for Mario Arias, who has on-the-ground experience as the campaign manager for former Democratic presidential candidate Jason Palmer, misinformation consumption isn’t just a Latine problem. Misinformation about trans people, for example, is usually targeted at all religious demographics in the U.S. “When it comes to gender, it goes back to Latines being primarily Catholic,” Arias tells Somos. “And individuals with conservative social stances, they're going to oppose individuals transitioning to another gender. That in itself is part of their religious views.”
And religion is easily weaponizable. According to Michael Fahey, a political communications specialist, Trump has used his face-value alignment to Christian values to convince religious folks to support him under the guise of protecting those values. “Trump is aligning himself with the church because God’s not going to send him a cease and desist,” Fahey tells Somos. “Voters think they are supporting a candidate that actually cares about them, but the only person Donald Trump cares about is himself, his money, and his throne. So all of these people that are worshiping at the altar of Donald Trump are worshiping a false God who's holding a false Bible.”
Of course, the most guileful and effective disinformation campaign targeting Latines is one the Republican Party has used for generations: likening Democrats to communist or socialist dictators in Latin American countries that many Latine voters fled from. Trump himself has often referred to Harris as "Comrade Harris” and warned that a Harris presidency would lead to a Marxist and communist United States, a lie that fact-checkers and experts have repeatedly refuted. Still, in states like Florida — home to a major and highly diverse Latine population that includes Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans — language that manipulates traumas tied to these countries is, unfortunately, a nefarious and winning strategy.
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"Of course, the most guileful and effective disinformation campaign targeting Latines is one the Republican Party has used for generations: likening Democrats to communist or socialist dictators in Latin American countries that many Latine voters fled from."
raquel reichard
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“There's so much diversity within Latinos. We don't all come from the same country,” Arias says. “There’s a difference between a Cuban immigrant versus a Mexican immigrant. We're going to have completely different experiences, and what we bring back to the United States affects how we become politically involved. If you're Cuban American, you may have experienced communism or socialism. And the messaging is that Republicans have been about anti-socialism, which does get the attention of Cuban Americans.”
In fact, a Florida International University poll conducted before Election Day found that 68% of Cuban-American voters in Miami-Dade County would vote for Trump. Overall, Trump won the county with 55% of the votes, the first time in more than three decades that the majority of people in the South Florida region voted Republican.
Dr Cruz-Nichols emphasizes that the Latine community is extremely diverse, where a range of lived experiences converge in ways that aren’t always generalizable. She cites sociological studies that indicate white Latines have very different lived experiences to Black and brown Latines, which ends up shaping their worldview to lean more conservative, even if they are women.
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"It's not necessarily always the case that the lightest-skinned Latinos are identifying with the Republican Party or have socially conservative views, but it's no coincidence that there is a high correlation."
Dr. Vanessa Cruz-Nichols
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“There are white Latinos and Latinas from many countries, and it's just fascinating to see that the U.S. and scholars are finally catching up with the variation in experiences and the colorism that exists within the Latin American and Latino experience,” she says. “It's not necessarily always the case that the lightest-skinned Latinos are identifying with the Republican Party or have socially conservative views, but it's no coincidence that there is a high correlation.”
And in a country where racial division and disparity continue to swell, white Latines leaning on the benefits their race affords them rather than their ethnic, migration, or language differences means more Latines could continue swinging to the right.