Trump Will Return to the White House on the Shoulders of Hispanics

It is no longer a secret to anyone. We have been saying it for years, but now it has been made evident in the most credible polls and formalized in prestigious opinion columns. Hispanics, in large numbers, have been changing their political affiliation from Democrat to Republican, to the point that in the elections next November they could be the force that decides whether President Donald Trump returns to the White House and whether, in addition, he will have Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

With less than 40 days away from the crucial day, a poll by NBC and the Spanish-language television network Telemundo reveals that Kamala Harris is receiving historically low support from only 54% of Latinos, while Donald Trump has jumped to 40%. This gap is the narrowest of the last four presidential cycles, when Hispanics were an important bulwark for the Democratic Party, which, by the way, has won the Hispanic vote in every presidential election since 1972, with the exception of 2004. 

The problem today is that, since 1992, Democrats have outnumbered Republicans among Hispanic voters by a difference of at least 35 points.

Today, even one of the most favorable polls for Kamala Harris shows that she is losing ground among Hispanics. A recent poll from Pew Research puts Harris ahead of Trump by 57 to 39 among Hispanics, while Biden had a lead of 61 to 36. That represents a 7-point drop in the Democrat margin.

The change of party preference by Hispanics is justified in several ways, and it had already been predicted by President Ronald Reagan when he stated that “Latinos are Republicans, although they don’t know it yet.” They have come to realize this, and this has been helped by the fact that they have discovered that their principles and values are more closely aligned with those of the Republicans than with those of the Democrats, in terms of faith, family, freedom, life, democracy, education, and opportunities, among other things.

It is becoming clear that many Hispanics have grown tired of the Democrats taking them for granted and making them countless promises that they have never kept.

In an article published over the weekend, the New York Post claimed that the shift in popularity began, “surprisingly to some” during the Trump administration. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because for most Hispanics it is the result of the significant achievements made by our community during the Trump four-year term.

And the New York Post goes on to say that Hispanics, who are predominantly working class and had already begun to move more towards Donald Trump and the Republicans in 2020, have continued their shift to the right. Polls show that Trump is doing better with Hispanics today than in 2020. The Cook Political Report average of demographic polls estimates that Kamala Harris leads Trump by approximately 12 points, a drop of 11 points from Biden’s margin. It is also telling that Trump’s share of Hispanic votes has not declined after Harris entered the race. Trump's 41.9% of Latinos are statistically identical to the 41.8% who supported him when the Democrats ousted Biden.

It’s a fact that Hispanic communities have been especially affected by the massive influx of undocumented migrants. Most of the communities through which migrants pass are predominantly Hispanic, and surely a large numbers of catch and releases, and resettlements are occurring in Latino neighborhoods, where the people and the language are more familiar.

This means that Hispanics, more than any other ethnic group, are being hit hardest by the disruption of migrants. The crimes that are committed occur on their streets. The jobs that immigrants are trying to get are the same ones that many Hispanic citizens are also fighting for. The unstable economy has disproportionately affected Latinos who are more susceptible to the pain of the risings costs and inflationary policies pushed by the Harris-Biden administration.

Unemployment has also risen among Hispanics, reaching 5.5% in the most recent jobs report. Stagnant or falling real wages and diminishing job prospects always hurt the party in power, and Harris’ poor showing among Latinos could be providential for Trump’s results in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia, and similarly, although on a lesser scale, in North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin.