Why Democrats Lost Latinos

Starr County, the single most Latino place in America, sits along the muddy waters of the Rio Grande in the dusty scrubland of South Texas. At 97 percent Latino, Starr is more Mexican than some places in Mexico, and, for well over 100 years, it voted solidly Democrat. In 2012, Barack Obama won with 86 percent of the vote; Hilary Clinton won with 79 percent. In 2020, there were warning signs for Democrats when 47 percent went for Donald Trump, but many of them dismissed it as a fluke.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump won with 58 percent of the vote. The story repeated itself around the U.S.: Though a majority of Latinos nationwide still voted for Harris, Trump improved massively compared to his 2020 results in the most Latino counties in every state, building on gains he had already made since 2016. This time, Democrats saw it coming. They collapsed anyway.

With this latest election, the evidence of political realignment among Latinos is too great to dismiss. The country is changing, and millions of Latinos — just like white autoworkers in Michigan or truck drivers in Pennsylvania — fear getting left behind in a global economy that seems to fuel itself by hollowing out border towns and steel mill cities. For decades, Democrats relied on Latinos seeing Republicans as racist or hostile to immigrants to keep high percentages of that group’s support; the rapid growth of the Latino population was supposed to keep the Democrats in the White House permanently. Now, many Latinos seem to have lost enough faith in Democrats’ handle on the economy to join Trump’s coalition, even after years of him accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.” If Republicans continue their gains with Latinos at the same stunning rate, it will be enough to keep Democrats out of power for generations.

And yet, Democrats might not be in as much danger as it appears. There’s evidence that this year’s vote does not represent a pure, wholesale ideological transformation of Latinos. On the ground in Starr County, and in similar places across the country, I met voters who thought of the election simply as a referendum on the economy. The school teachers and gardeners and ranchers didn’t talk like Steven Bannon or J.D. Vance. They talked about the price of milk and gas. More than that, they saw national Democrats as apathetic — the party didn’t see their path to victory going through many Latino neighborhoods, so they focused elsewhere. And the results reflected that.

That all could change in 2028. Disadvantages that proved insurmountable for Kamala Harris, might not hobble Democrat’s next nominee — if, that is, the party can understand why they are losing Latinos in the first place.

All the way back in January, the signs of Democrats’ doom were buried deep in the snow in Iowa, in a place called Denison. Set in the rolling farmland near the Nebraska border, Denison is 50 percent Latino, which made it the first majority Latino town to vote in the 2024 election. On a still, -5 degree day, I drove around town talking to voters getting ready to caucus for the Iowa Republican primary. Above every building, the smell of blood and offal hung in the air — Denison is surrounded by a ring of massive meatpacking plants. Slaughterhouse work is difficult and dangerous, and few Americans seem to want to do it, so the plants have long relied on immigrants. I spoke with Ismael Cardenas, a soft-spoken Mexican immigrant from Michoacán who worked at one of the plants; he was at the Caucuses with his wife, Vicenta Lira, a janitor at Denison High School. Cardenas told me he was supporting Trump. Over the last three years, his family had been crushed by inflation and gas prices. Though they had once voted Democrat, they’d stopped believing that the party actually cared about working people like them, no matter how the politicians talked. “What Trump says is what Trump does. If he promises something, he is going to do it,” Cardenas told me.

“That’s it, exactly,” Lira said, jumping in. “Democrats talk so eloquently, but their actions are not good. The way Trump talks may not be nice. I think, at times, he has said racist things. But his actions, his policies are good. And he keeps his promises.”

Just as there are hundreds of different reasons white people vote for Trump, there are hundreds of different reasons individual Latinos choose to vote for him. However, there’s one powerful variable that explains Latinos’ embrace of Trump more than any other: class. Over 80 percent of Latinos are working class, and an enormous number of them are strivers working manual labor, like Cardenas and Lira. Trump’s appeal in a Latino meatpacking town, then, looks a lot like his appeal in white factory towns in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The real estate billionaire is channeling working class grievances. In Iowa, Cardenas and Lira believed his core message: That Democrats are out-of-touch elites, who neither understand nor care about workers like them.

These two Latinos had gone through an actual ideological shift. Lira voted for Obama twice, but had transformed into a passionate Republican. Other Trump voters I met in town, however, were much less ideological. Their message, instead, was something like this: Under Biden, there were days I couldn’t afford to fill up my truck with gas; the price of eggs doubled; my rent went up. Entonces, Biden is fired. It’s time for change. While the White House could point at record-high unemployment, and historically high blue-collar wages, high prices under Biden were much more keenly felt than any boost in paychecks. Accordingly, Trump’s ability to run as the change candidate gave him a huge, structural advantage with Latinos upset with the economy.

At the same time, this year, Democrats lost their own one-time structural advantage with Latinos. While the economy is far-and-away the top issue for most Latino voters, any voter who cares about a welcoming immigration policy tends to vote Democrat. But, back in January, border crossings had reached an all-time high, and Biden (then the nominee) had adopted a heavily restrictionist position. Lira was disgusted with Democrats’ flip-flopping: She had voted for Obama in large part for his promise to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers. But after 12 years of Democrats promising that pathway with no evidence of anything changing, Lira came to believe she’d been lied to.

Carlos Odio, the co-founder of Equis Research (one of the most esteemed Latino polling firms), heard many similar stories in his focus groups. “While in the past immigration was never the number-one issue, it drew a line in the sand — it helped people understand which side, which party, they were on. But Democrats have squandered their advantage on the issue,” Odio told me recently. “They would say, ‘Democrats say they’re going to do all these good things and do none of it; Republicans say they’re going to do all these bad things but don’t actually do them. So why should I vote on this issue at all?’”

Democrats figured something out in 2020: “Es la economía, estupido.” During the campaign, Biden had assumed Trump’s anti-immigrant messaging would push Latinos toward Democrats; instead, many Latinos sided with Trump because of his economic message, which attacked Biden for supporting economic shutdowns and mask mandates. In 2024, Harris re-tooled Democrats’ pitch to Latinos to focus on the economy. However, she may have overcorrected. Harris took a hard line on the border, and she distanced herself from the “representation matters” species of identity politics message that had been a staple of party strategy for years. Yes, it was a good idea she didn’t have Lin-Manuel Miranda compose a rap for her to send to Latinos. But with Democrats polling miserably on the border, Harris avoided any messaging that made it sound like she wanted more immigrants. That left her with little to offer Latinos, other than the promise that she’d be better for their wallets — a promise that many found tough to believe.

“You have to speak to people as both working people looking out for their families and as Latinos who don’t always feel included — that combination is what gets Democrats the high margins,” Odio said. “So if all of the sudden you’re going to say identity doesn’t matter, don’t factor your ethnicity into your choice, just decide who you think is better on the economy — that’s not the question you wanted on voters’ minds, as the Democrats.”

Here’s how profoundly damaged Democrats were by losing both immigration and the economy as winning issues: They lost support even among undocumented Latinos. Lira told me she had undocumented friends in Denison who (though they couldn’t vote) nonetheless supported Trump. Some had lived in the states for decades, working long hours, paying Social Security taxes they’d never get back. They felt bitter and aggrieved that the newest arrivals, especially those from Venezuela, had been given humanitarian parole under Biden, while they themselves still lacked legal status. They felt cut in line. And the feeling of being cut in line is the glue that unites conservatives in this country. Democrats flip-flopping lost them both pro-immigration voters and anti-immigration voters. It wasn’t just that their proposals weren’t popular — they had simply lost all credibility on the issue.

In July, I went back to Starr County (my fourth visit since the days after the 2020 election). One of the first people I talked to was Alexis Garcia, who worked at the local supermarket. Garcia had been in high school when Trump first ran for president in 2016. Garcia, who was too young to vote that year, told me he would’ve voted for Bernie Sanders; but, after Sanders dropped out, he found himself more and more interested in Trump’s own brand of economic populism. Garcia didn’t tell anyone that he had begun to like Trump — he was scared of how they’d react. Garcia told me that if his classmates found out that he was supporting Trump, they’d tell him “Tienes nopal en la frente,” you’ve got cactus on your face (the phrase Mexicans use to accuse someone of being “Mexican on the outside, but white on the inside”). After Trump’s enormous gains in Starr in 2020, however, that taboo had been shattered. Garcia came out as pro-Trump, and found a community with a passionate cadre of other local Republicans. Later that same week, I watched as a crew of these supporters rolled through the county in a “Trump Train” — a line of trucks and choppers flying Trump flags. As I talked to a local Border Patrol agent who had joined the parade, we kept getting interrupted by loud honking: car after car that drove by us on the highway was honking and waving in support.

It’s impossible to overstate this interpersonal element to politics. Many people choose who to vote for the same way that people in Starr County have chosen to root for the Dallas Cowboys: it’s who their parents root for, it’s who all their neighbors root for.

In Starr, this summer I saw the clearest sign that Democrats were about to lose big — and that sign was their absence. While Texas Republicans were all across South Texas, eagerly courting voters, Democrats were much harder to find. There’s a simple, and understandable, explanation: Kamala Harris had little faith that she’d flip Texas blue. Her campaign spent almost no money in the state. It was the same story in Florida, a one-time swing state that Democrats now admit is red. While Latinos would’ve shifted right regardless, this is the biggest reason Latinos shifted so far right in places like South Texas and Miami-Dade — the Democrats performed a strategic surrender.

But I did expect a robust Democratic presence in swing states. In mid-October, I went to Reading, Pennsylvania’s fourth-largest city, which is almost 70 percent Latino. Pennsylvania, more than any other state, was a must-win for Harris. So I was stunned when every local Latino Democrat I spoke to told me the same thing: Trump’s campaign was outcompeting Harris in Reading. In the two months before the election, Trump held two rallies there; J.D. Vance came through; and Tucker Carlson had taped a segment in town with Alex Jones and Jack Posobiec. Harris, on the other hand, hadn’t come to Reading since 2023, before she was at the top of the Democratic ticket. 

“Unfortunately she hasn’t been here, and that’s a whole other struggle. We need Harris to come here so she can win here,” Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, a Democratic state house representative, told me. “I’m speculating, but perhaps the people running her campaign are looking at the numbers, and that’s where they’re deciding to spend their time — based on where people are more likely to vote. And Trump is taking advantage of that.” 

In low-turnout neighborhoods like Reading, door-knocking and voter outreach makes a huge difference. It’s not just about one candidate’s messaging, or even their platform — it’s about their willingness to show up. Cepeda-Freytiz said she won her own race by knocking on doors on Reading’s southside, where other candidates didn’t go. “Everybody was scared to go to the southside — but I’m from New York City, and I’m not afraid of anything,” she said. She registered dozens of first-time voters.

It’s been a long time since national Democrats have gone to those same houses. Barack Obama came to Reading in 2008, but, by 2012, the Democrats’ campaign strategy had changed. That year, Obama’s re-election campaign pioneered a big-data driven approach to voter turnout: Using analysis of past elections, staffers located the individual voters who were the most likely to turn up at the polls, and they sent someone to knock on their doors. Since then, Democrats have largely continued that strategy, focusing their time and resources on reaching more likely, persuadable voters. Perhaps unwittingly, that’s meant that, since 2012, the party has increasingly neglected Latino neighborhoods, where turnout persistently trails far below the national average. In Pennsylvania, Obama spent the 2012 cycle in the suburban halos around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; he never went back to Reading. Clinton, Biden and Harris pursued the same strategy. Their get-out-the-vote operation followed them to the same places. That’s created an opening for Trump, who has never been afraid to chase first-time voters. While Democrats’ data map sent them to whiter, college-educated suburbs, Trump made an audacious play in low-turnout Latino cities like Reading.

On Monday, on the final day of the campaign, Harris finally added a stop to Reading — she visited a cafe and knocked on doors in between rallies in Allentown and Philadelphia. The vice president was trying to capitalize on one of Trump’s unforced errors. The week before, at a rally in Madison Square Garden, a comedian pumping up the crowd for Trump had called Puerto Rico, “an island of garbage.” Huge celebrities like Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee immediately condemned Trump, and Democrats were hopeful they’d get a bump with Latinos, or at least Puerto Ricans. Maybe that happened — we don’t yet have all the precinct-level data from the most Puerto Rican neighborhoods. But it wasn’t enough to counteract months of on-the-ground campaigning from Trump and Co.

Still, the situation for Democrats in swing states looks a lot better than it does in South Texas and Florida. Odio said that, in his own analysis of the vote, Democrats only performed a few points worse among Latinos in battleground states than they did in 2020 — “erosion, not realignment,” as Odio put it. When you grade on the curve on inflation and a super-unpopular incumbent, Democrats get even better grades — back when Biden was the nominee, Odio expected them to lose in a blowout. “I actually think the Republicans underperformed,” Odio said.

The morning after the election, I got lunch with Chuck Rocha, a Democratic campaign strategist who came to fame after he helped Sanders perform shockingly well with Latinos in South Texas and elsewhere. Rocha had on a jacket and tie — he was about to go onto CBS. His large black cowboy hat was sitting on the table next to him. As we ate, Rocha’s message was the same as it’s been since 2016: Democrats can win with Latinos if they put economic populism, and “pocketbook” issues front and center. The question, now, is if they have anyone on their bench who can authentically share that message.

Rocha is hopeful that Democrats can still win with Latinos if they actually invest in earning back those votes. But his own biography reveals that Democrats’ problems might run deeper than a few election cycles. He was born in Tyler, Texas, to a Mexican American family. Almost all the men in his family worked at the Goodyear tire factory. Rocha never went to college, and his introduction to politics was working in the plant’s union, alongside the men in his family. That eventually led him to the Democratic Party, which Rocha joined in 1990, hoping to, as he recently put it, “fight NAFTA, drain the swamp of over-educated rich people in power, stop investing my money in foreign wars and prioritize making things in America again.”

Over our table, Rocha raised his eyebrows and asked me, “Who does that sound like today?”

After a Democrat — Bill Clinton — signed NAFTA, thousands of factory jobs moved to Mexico. Rocha and the men in his family all lost their jobs when the Goodyear plant shut down. There’s a similar story in Reading — during Obama’s presidency, a litany of factories, including Hershey and Pepsi, closed their doors for the last time. The hard truth for Democrats is that their problems with Latinos, and their problems with all working class voters, go beyond Trump — these are people who feel they’ve been materially failed by Democrats for a generation.

“Latinos will just become more, and more, and more important to all parts of our campaigns — because of our population growth, there’s no way to ignore it,” Rocha said. “This is not a problem we can turn our back on. It will take more than one or two years, but this is a problem that we have to fix, or we’re going to be in the minority for a long, long time.”

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