The readers of this newsletter and and the followers of my work are going to hear something you have heard before. But I’m going to keep underscoring this point over and over because the natural bias and default strategy for Democrats and Republicans continues to be about ICE raids and mass deportations when thinking about Latino voters.
I’m going to keep driving this home because until that habit is broken Democrats will default their strategy towards Latinos back to immigration issues and they’ll keep struggling with these voters. Why? Mainly because it is white progressive voters that think of Latinos as exclusively immigrant, Spanish speakers who are all lying awake about ICE raids more than lying awake worried about how to pay for rent or exploding gas prices.
Donald Trump drew a historic share of the Latino vote in 2024, capturing 48% of Hispanic voters - the highest number in history for a Republican.
But starting almost immediately after Trumps inauguration his numbers started to collapse - specifically the decline in support connected directly to ‘Liberation Day’ - the day he announced his tariff plans.
The ensuing chaos in the financial markets and seizing up of key industries Latinos work in (housing, construction, manufacturing and agriculture) caused a historic collapse.
Yes, we care about the ICE raids and masked jack-booted thugs hunting down brown skinned people. Yes, polling shows we care more about it than any other ethnic group in the country.
But it is the economy that continues to be prioritized among Latino working class voters - and its not by a small margin. My polling work with Kamala Harris’ pollster David Binder just this year showed that Hispanic voters want the economy prioritized over cracking down on ICE raids by a whopping 2 to 1 margin.
So yes it is overwhelmingly the economy driving Latinos away from the Republicans and Trump in the same way that the exact same issue drove them away from Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in 2024. Add to that the terrorizing ICE raids and mass deportations policy and the GOP’s new racial realignment theory is smoking in ashes.
All completely the fault of Donald Trump and the Republicans.
