Published September 29, 2024
Hispanic Americans have long been a bedrock of support for the Democratic Party. There are signs that’s changing — and it could decide the election this November.
Democrats have won the Hispanic vote in every presidential election since 1972. With the exception of 2004, Democratic nominees since 1992 had always beaten their Republican counterpart by at least 35 points with Hispanic voters.
That began to change, surprisingly to some, during the Trump administration.
Hispanics are largely working-class, and by 2020 they had begun to warm up to Donald Trump and his party.
Joe Biden won Hispanics by only 23 points, 60 to 37, data from the Democratic firm Catalist show. That was enough to shift Florida from a swing state to one that leaned Republican and boosted Trump in both Nevada and Arizona.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.