by ADN America Staff
A shift in Hispanic American voters in key swing states helped reelect former Republican President Donald Trump to the White House over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and that expansion was critical to his victory, according to several reports.
The Democrats spent much of their time building a campaign strategy that depicted the former Republican president as a dangerous threat to democracy while polls repeatedly reported that their key issues were inflation and the escalating cost of living.
Trump did not win a majority of Latinos, but he did gain 13% since his loss in the 2020 elections. According to CNN exit polls, Trump’s nationwide support from Hispanics jumped from just 32% to 45%.
Although Trump didn’t win a majority of either group, he won support from about 13% of Black voters nationally and 45% of Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls. In the 2020 election, Trump won just 8% of Black voters and 32% of Latinos.
“Trump made those inroads thanks mostly to support from Black and Latino men, helping him overperform his 2020 performance in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit and other cities,” says a Nov. 6 post-election report published by USA Today.
According to NBC exit polls, Trump won Hispanic American males 54%-44% over his Democratic rival, a stark contrast to President Biden who won the same group 54%-44%.
In 2020, NBC reported that Hispanic American males supported Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, 59% to 36%.
Trump’s ability to capture a larger segment of the Hispanic American vote with his ability to maintain his popularity in the Black community were instrumental to his reelection. NBC reported that Trump won 20% of Black males against Harris, which is close to what he mustered in 2020 election.
Cuban American Texas Sen. Ted Cruz talked about the Hispanic shift in his victory speech, saying that, “We are seeing tonight generational change in South Texas,” which is usually more liberal. “This decisive victory should shake the Democrat establishment to its core. He added that in the Latino-dominated Rio Grande Valley, “our Hispanic communities aren’t just leaving the Democrat Party — they’re coming home to conservative values they never left.”
Trump’s ability to capture Hispanic Americans came even after the mainstream media amplified offensive comments about Puerto Rico made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at one of his rallies in New York that first appeared to give Harris a spike in Puerto Rican neighborhoods in battleground states such as Pennsylvania.
Hinchcliffe shocked the political community, drawing criticism from both sides of the aisle when he mused that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”
The Keystone State is home to an estimated 500,000 Puerto Ricans who make up 8% of the state.
But that didn’t stop the Republican magnate from capturing Pennsylvania’s critical 19 electoral votes, which was just one of three states that helped Trump knock down the infamous Democratic ‘Blue Wall’ in the Midwest.
Trump also took Michigan’s 15 electoral votes and Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes giving an irrefutable victory that made it impossible for Harris to overcome.
Even in Osceola County, a central Florida’s Democratic stronghold with a high population of Puerto Ricans, Trump had a small lead. Biden previously won that country with 56% of the vote in 2020.
Some reports suggested the key to Trump’s victory was connecting with Latino men who did not appreciate messages of “toxic masculinity” from the left and were more concerned about the reality of their job prospects and income power since many Hispanic males disproportionately work hard labor jobs.
In an interview with USA Today, Phoenix, Arizona truck driver Arturo Munoz said that Trump’s message about rebuilding the economy resonated with him more than anything.
“Hispanic and Latino men are very physically hard working,” he told the nationwide Gannett newspaper, adding that “Hispanic guys are busting their butt manually every day. The difference in pay, the difference in hours, the difference in cuts, the difference in providing for their families. I’ve seen it.”
Munoz said he worked at a gas station in 2016 to 2020 before becoming a truck driver, which was supposed to be a job that would offer better pay and more opportunities, but the economy for the past four years hasn’t done much to improve his financial status.
In a post-election morning opinion column penned by Daniel McCarthy of The Spectator, he explained how Latino men did not respond to the left’s messages that criticized men and American patriotism.
“White liberals believe … that masculinity is ‘toxic’ and the world needs more female leaders … [but] Latinos are not white liberals … Some still retain an affinity for the ‘machismo’ notable in Hispanic cultures and may have patriarchal views of women and social hierarchy that derive from Catholic traditions. They do not suffer from ‘white guilt.’ So when the Democrats offer them Kamala Harris, a charmless politician, Latino men do not automatically take the deal,” McCarthy wrote.
McCarthy added that Latino men also did not respond to the left’s message about immigration and Biden-Harris’ record at the border.
“From the 1970s until today, progressives and liberals have tended to deplore white ethnics as bigots who were uncomfortable with non-white immigration. Trump’s success with Latinos, however, suggests a different interpretation … They also object to unlimited immigration on cultural grounds, having become proud of the American citizenship their group has acquired. They may even become more vociferous defenders of Americanism than whites who can trace their ancestry in the U.S. further back.
McCarthy explained that Democrat’s identity theory politics of grouping Hispanics into one group may have hurt their ability to see the different nationalities more clearly.
“So no, Latinos do not necessarily sympathize more with new immigrants, even when they are Latino too, than they do with Americans who want to restrict immigration. The fact that ‘Latino’ covers an enormous range of nationalities and racial combinations only further weakens the ludicrous notion that Latinos all have one identity, one set of interests, and one preferred political party – the Democrats.”
Warning signs about the Latino vote were present even before Election Day on Nov. 5.
A Nov. 4 article published by Politico, headlined that “Trump’s Gains With Pennsylvania Latinos Are Real. Maybe Enough to Withstand ‘Island of Garbage.’ The piece by Jack Herrera reported that, “The Trump campaign has made an audacious play for the fast-growing Puerto Rican and Dominican population in eastern Pennsylvania. It’s paying off …
The article opened up with comments with Eddie Morán, who serves as the mayor of Reading, Pennsylvania, which has become the Keystone State’s most Latino city.
Morán who won reelection handedly by a four-to-one margin last year told Politico that the town has seen a shift in its leadership from white to Latino and that some political sentiment there has shifted along with it.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he told Politico. “At times, even though I was a registered Democrat, I felt I wasn’t totally accepted by my own party locally.”
After Morán shut down his campaign headquarters in Reading, the Trump campaign rented the same space for Latino Americans for Trump.
“Man, that was brilliant, just brilliant,” Morán said with a smile. “I feel some kind of way about it, but, I mean, politically speaking, kudos to them, right?”
Election Day polls showed warning signs about the Hispanic vote escalating for Trump in battleground states.
A coalition of progressive groups reported that their exit poll data indicated Harris’ greatest support from Hispanic Americans was in Pennsylvania and her lowest was in Florida, where Trump won 53% of the Latino vote.
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Written by staff reporters at ADN America Staff.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Daniel Scavino Jr.
