Copyright HuffPost
First, Latino voters were the vanguard of the New American Majority, growing in number and destined to lift the Democratic Party to new heights. Later, around 2020, they were the canary in the coal mine for Democrats’ problems with voters without a college degree. In 2024, they were the keystone of the new multiracial working-class coalition President Donald Trump had assembled. After swinging back to Democrats in a major way to help power Tuesday night’s blue wave, however, Latinos may take up a new role in American politics as the preeminent swing voters of the 2020s. The group, which is younger and more working-class than the American electorate writ large, has felt the sting of inflation, housing and cost-of-living crises more than most. And that means neither party can count on their loyalty. Advertisement “This is a community that’s desperate, frustrated, angry and is more than willing to punish what party is in power and is not addressing the problem,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican consultant and expert on Latino voters. Latinos were not the only part of Trump’s 2024 coalition that crumbled on Tuesday night. Other demographics he made gains with, such as young men and Asian-Americans, similarly lined up to support Democrats at comparatively sky-high levels. But their growing numbers and potential sway in key swing states make them the most important of the groups to abandon the GOP. Madrid and others warned that the party can not just assume Latino voters are back in their camp permanently. While Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani all made specific outreach to Latinos and earned impressive performances, it was anti-Trump sentiment that drove most of the vote-switching. Advertisement “I think the strategic mistake made by Trump and Republicans is they anticipated and/or expected the swing that happened in 2024 was a solidified swing, and not really understanding that this community is up in the air still,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told HuffPost, noting Democrats were able to quickly regain a leading position with Latinos after George W. Bush’s strong performance with them in his 2004 reelection bid. “This has happened before.” It’s also unclear how many votes Democrats were able to flip, compared to how many Trump-supporting Republicans may have simply chosen to sit on the couch rather than cast a ballot. Still, the gains Democrats made buoyed the party’s spirits and have them reevaluating some of their plans for the 2026 midterm elections. In Texas, Republicans completed a Trump-inspired redraw of the state’s congressional map, assuming the party would be able to hold onto its recent gains among Latinos. However, two Democrats involved in House races said strategists are now scouring for strong candidates in some newly drawn districts that were previously thought unwinnable. Advertisement Democrats also pointed to Texas’ Senate race and the Nevada governor’s race, where Republican Joe Lombardo is running for reelection, and to the race in Texas’ 15th District, where they successfully recruited Tejano music star Bobby Pulido to challenge GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz, as Tuesday’s strong performance in contests is giving them renewed confidence. Rep. Nellie Pou, a freshman Democrat who represents many of New Jersey’s Hispanic communities, is also looking stronger than before. Similarly, a strong performance for Democrats in the nominally nonpartisan race for mayor of Miami has some operatives in both parties wondering if Sunshine State Republicans may have to reevaluate their own plans to draw new congressional lines and create additional GOP seats. Advertisement Exit polls, which are often imprecise, did show significant shifts back to Democrats after Trump made gains in 2024. However, examining municipal-level results paints a clear picture. The four Virginia cities or counties with the highest percentage of Latino residents — Manassas City, Manassas Park, Prince William County and Harrisonburg — were also the four local jurisdictions with the biggest swings from Trump’s column to supporting Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor. Manassas Park, a city with 17,000 people in the D.C. suburbs, is emblematic. Its population is 42% plurality Latino, and Biden won it by 33 points in 2020. Trump cut those margins drastically in 2024, with Harris winning it by just 20 percentage points. In 2025, Spanberger blew past both of those margins, winning it by a whopping 42 percentage points. In New Jersey, Biden won Passaic County — a 42% Latino county in the suburbs of New York City — by 16 percentage points in 2020. Trump shockingly won it by 3 points in 2024. Sherrill won it by 15 points on Tuesday night. Advertisement Some of this comes down to effort from the Democratic campaigns there: Spanberger speaks fluent Spanish, using it to make appearances in Spanish-language media and record a Spanish-language radio ad. Sherrill held a Univision town hall and spent $1.4 million on ads targeting Latino voters. These ads largely focused on the cost of living and supplying positive biographical information about the two Democratic candidates, with Sherrill’s ads in particular tying Republican opponent Jack Ciatarelli to Trump. None of them, notably, mentioned immigration, which Madrid noted polls of Latino voters usually find well behind a host of economic issues in importance, even though polling often shows widespread disapproval of aggressive ICE raids among Latinos. “Many early takes honed in on immigration alone as the reason many Latinos have soured on Trump,” Carlos Odio, a Democratic strategist at the Latino-focused group EquIs Research, wrote on social media. “It is the immigration overreach. And also continued economic pain. And extremism.” Advertisement “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the recent past and flatten voters down to one issue,” he added. Still, Gallego said Democrats need to get their immigration message right to help lock in the Latino vote in the midterms. “Racially profiling Latinos, going after people in this country illegally but who are a part of these communities with no major criminal records” was part of what was pushing Latinos away from the GOP, he said. “Democrats need to offer an immigration plan that is in line with where Latinos are, having and wanting border security, while also having a sane sensible immigration reform plan,” he continued. “But it has to be both.” Advertisement Madrid said Democrats won’t be able to win Latino voters at the levels they once did until they return to their working-class roots. He pointed to embracing housing construction, which would both lower housing and supply jobs for the 20% of Latino men who work in residential construction, as a potentially winning issue for the party, but was unsure whether they would be willing to take on environmental groups who might stand in the way. “They’re looking for an aspirational economic agenda, and neither party is providing that,” he said. “This was not a pro-Spanberger, pro-anybody, pro-Democratic Party vote. This was a rejection of Trump, a person they really gave a chance to. And it’s turned out to be the shortest political honeymoon in recent memory.”
