Latino voters in Florida and Texas helped propel former President Trump to victories Tuesday in counties where Democrats had an edge in the past two presidential elections.
Why it matters: Most Latinos still vote Democratic, but the results suggested that as a bloc this fast-growing segment of the electorate — now about 20% of the population — is continuing to slowly shift to the right.
- Tuesday’s results also suggest that many Latinos share Trump’s concerns about illegal immigration, despite the racist rhetoric he’s used to describe undocumented Latinos.
Zoom in: In winning Florida, Trump got more than 54% of the vote in Miami-Dade County, which is majority Latino.
- Hillary Clinton won that county with 63% of the vote in 2016, and President Biden won it with 53% in 2020.
- But Republicans have made massive inroads in Miami-Dade, where traditionally conservative Cuban Americans make up about half of the Latino population.
In Hidalgo County, in South Texas — a Mexican American stronghold that Biden won with 58% of the vote in 2020 — Vice President Harris and Trump were virtually tied early Wednesday, with Harris leading by less than half a percentage point.
- In Cameron County, at the southern tip of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, Trump led Harris, 52-47, according to early results. Biden won that county with 56% of the vote four years ago.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is Cuban American and beat back a challenge from Rep. Colin Allred on Tuesday, devoted several minutes of his victory speech to Hispanic voters who shifted away from Democrats in this election.
- “We are seeing tonight generational change in South Texas,” Cruz said. “This decisive victory should shake the Democrat establishment to its core.”
- Cruz added that he spent many months in the Latino-majority Rio Grande Valley, learning that “our Hispanic communities aren’t just leaving the Democrat Party — they’re coming home to conservative values they never left.”
Central California may also turn out to be a bellwether for how Latinos are shifting their politics.
- In 2020, Biden carried Fresno County, where nearly 55% of the population is Hispanic, by 8 points over Trump.
- Trump was leading Harris by about 4 percentage points early Wednesday with nearly half the vote counted.
Harris won California on Tuesday, but appeared to be underperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers in several other heavily Latino areas — including Merced County, where 64% of the population is Latino.
Zoom out: Earlier this year, Axios Latino spent time speaking to Latino voters in Calfornia’s Central Valley, where Cesar Chavez once launched the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott.
- Many said they felt dismissed by the Democratic Party and had seldom been courted by Republicans — until recently.
The intrigue: An offensive remark about Puerto Ricans by a comedian at a recent Trump rally in New York appeared to boost Harris in Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Philadelphia and New York.
- But in Florida’s Osceola County, home to a large Puerto Rican community, Trump had a small lead with most of the vote counted. Biden had won that county with 56% of the vote in 2020.
Zoom out: An NBC News exit poll released Tuesday, done with a consortium of news organizations, indicated that 53% of Latinos who voted identified as Democrats, compared to 45% who said they were Republicans.
- An Axios review of exit polls going back 50 years found that when Democratic presidential candidates get less than about 64% of the Latino vote, they typically lose.
- Harris’ support among Latinos was polling in the mid- to upper 50s throughout the presidential campaign, and on Tuesday she was falling short of the historical benchmark she needed.
Stunning stat: A coalition of progressive groups said late Tuesday that their exit poll data indicated Harris’ greatest support from Latinos was in Pennsylvania and her lowest was in Florida, where Trump got 53% of the Hispanic vote.
- The groups are scheduled to release their full findings on Wednesday.
