After Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s dramatic outreach to Latino voters, a coalition of Democratic-leaning Latino groups is fighting change and trying to reconcile it with policies many Hispanics say they support.
The groups protested how big Trump’s gains were, especially with people of color Among Latino menbut acknowledged that the gains are significant, as is the Latino gender divide.
The recurring debate over how well exit polls capture Latino voters — groups and pollsters have raised it in previous elections — has ramifications for nonprofit groups focused on improving Latino voter turnout. These same groups also advocate for a Latino agenda, candidates, and equality issues that are largely aligned with the policies of the Democratic Party. It can also affect their funding for these missions, which is an ongoing struggle.
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative for UnidosUS, a national Latino advocacy group whose social welfare arm UnidosUS Action Fund supports Vice President Kamala Harris, said in no uncertain terms, economic discontent is driving the voice of Latino men.
“Republicans had a historic night, largely expressed by their dissatisfaction with the economy. It was the strongest driver,” Martinez de Castro said at a conference call on Tuesday.
“If there’s a mandate here, it’s … raising wages to lower the cost of food, housing and health care, and that’s especially true for Hispanics,” he said.
Along with UnidosUS, Latino-centric advocacy groups Voto Latino sponsored the survey of Latino voters, as did Somos Votantes, the Hispanic Federation and La Brega y Fuerza Foundation. Additional sponsors include organizations such as immigration, progressive causes, or other groups focused on communities of color, such as VOA, the American Civil Liberties Union, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Climate Power, and the First Nations Development Institute.
Martinez de Castro said voters heard more about addressing those needs than Trump and Republicans. Oftentimes, candidates choose to stay silent on issues they think will hurt them, and “I think the Democrats did that on the economy for a while,” he said.
Coalition rejected the results of the national exit poll It shows Trump winning the majority of Latino men – 55% – to Harris’ 43%. American Electorate Poll of Groups – using a larger Latino sample and additional methods for Hispanic voting, reversed that result, with Harris winning 56% of Latino men to Trump’s 43%. BSP Research, the African American Studies Collaborative and Harvard University conducted the survey. Latinos were surveyed as part of a pool of 9,000 voters polled for the American Electoral Voter Survey.
The coalition said it surveyed 3,750 Latinos in all 50 states, and its poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.62 percentage points for Latino voters.
“The national exit poll is wrong about Latinos and Latino men,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of BSP Research and pollster for Harris. “They changed the Republicans. However, the majority of Latin American men continued to vote Democratic.
In general, An NBC News Exit Poll put Harris at 52% 46% of Hispanic voters for Trump. Coalition survey He found Harris winning Latino voters 62% to 37%. On the eve of the election NBC News survey It showed 40% of Trump to Harris’ 54% lead.
Edison Research, which conducts national exit polling for NBC News and other news organizations, surveyed 2,750 Latino voters nationwide.
Rob Farbman, executive vice president of Edison Research, told NBC News that he believes “the general narrative that Hispanics are supporting Trump is true.”
Edison Research’s exit poll also showed a smaller shift toward Trump among Latinos, he said. 60% voted for Harris, compared to 69% for Joe Biden in 2020, a 9-point swing. (NBC News exit polls show that Latinos voted 38% for Trump this year and 30% in 2020.) An Edison Research poll of Hispanic states also found Biden trailing Hispanics by 13 points to Harris.
“You just look at the highly Hispanic states across the country, the evidence is clear, the change is real, and there’s always been this gender gap between Hispanic men and Hispanic women, so it makes sense that Trump is ahead of Harris among men because there’s a big change overall, and we’re at least a 10-point we expect a gender difference,” he said.
Trump won Latino-dominant states such as Miami-Dade in Florida, which Republicans have consistently won, as well as several counties in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, including Starr County. Voted Democrat for 100 years.
NBC News reached out to the Trump campaign about how Latino men voted and Trump’s gains with Hispanic voters, but did not receive a response.
Since the election, some pundits and analysts have attributed Trump’s victory to Latino voters, particularly Latino men — or some Harris supporters have blamed it.
Democratic-leaning Latino groups retracted that story, citing their own polls.
“Latino voters did not play a significant role in Trump’s victory,” said Gary Segura, president and co-founder of BSP Research, a Democratic polling firm.
“We have a different number than the exit poll, but even if we accept the exit poll numbers, Latinos didn’t make a difference for Trump in any state,” Segura said. “If we take out Latinos in any state, Trump will still win. Latin Americans did not provide a margin of victory in any state.
Barreto said that in raw numbers, white men switched the most from Democrats to Republicans. In the exit poll, 37 percent of male participants identified as white, and 6 percent identified as Latino in the survey of Latino groups.
Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic polling firm that focuses on Latinos, which is not part of the coalition’s polling. he said of Latino voters as a whole “this looks and sounds like a redo,” in a social media post.
Citing a coalition poll, Martinez de Castro said the top issues for voters were inflation, jobs, the economy, housing and pocketbook issues related to health care costs.
Fifty-five percent of those polled said Democrats would do a better job of addressing the issues most important to them.
Martinez de Castro said the disconnect between Latinos’ vote-based politics and their support for Trump “is an area of strategic thinking for Democrats.”
Latino voters were more likely to support a Democratic or progressive agenda, support giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, support abortion rights and support investing in clean energy, Barreto found in the coalition’s poll.
The number of inquiries has increased on the eve of the election support among Latinos for tougher border enforcement following an increase in the number of immigrants arriving or apprehended at the border.
According to a post-election poll by Democratic-leaning groups, Latino voters overwhelmingly support granting legal status to undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for a long time, including those brought to the United States as children. They also support making it easier for family members to come to the United States with visas, passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump killed, and passing a voting rights act that would ensure that all American citizens can vote without hindrance.
“Let’s be clear that Trump has no mandate for mass deportations or sending in the military to round up our immigrant neighbors and family members,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group VOA. “American voters, and especially Latino voters, still strongly support legal status for long-term immigrants.”
Cardenas said their tracking shows Republicans and their allies spent more than $1 billion on anti-immigrant ads this election cycle.