Que pasa con Latino voters? 

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That’s the question that media pundits, political analysts and party insiders want answered now that the curtain has drawn on the 2024 presidential election.

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Latino voters served up some good news and some bad news. 

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The good news: The fabled “sleeping giant” is now fully awake and, from the looks of it, highly caffeinated. For generations, we’ve been saying that one day our political power would match our demographic growth. This could be that day. 

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The bad news: Now that the hombre has been stirred from his slumber, it seems he might be due for a cognitive evaluation. Over the years, the giant appears to have gone quite mad. So much so that a lot of folks on the left would just hit the “snooze button” and have another siesta.  

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In this year’s election, president-elect Donald Trump got a whopping 46% of the Latino vote. He got the support of 55% of Latino men, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by 10 points with that demographic. Overall, Trump increased his support among Latinos by double digits compared to his showing in 2020. He carried all seven battleground states, and he did that on the strength of Latino support in states like Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

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My, how times have changed. It wasn’t so long ago that Latinos were a dependable part of the Democratic base. In the 1990’s, we turned out in large numbers for Bill Clinton, giving him 73% of our votes in his 1996 re-election bid. In the 2000’s, a sizable chunk of us defected to the GOP just long enough to vote for George W. Bush who got 44% of the Latino vote in his 2004 reelection. 

For the next 20 years, that was the high-water mark for Latino support for a Republican running for president. Trump blew past that marker. 

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Mea culpa. As a Never Trumper, I didn’t see this coming. For weeks leading up to the election, I’ve been predicting that Trump would get 40% of the Latino vote. But 46% was beyond my imagination. I should have known better. Whenever Trump’s name is on the ballot, I always underestimate his appeal to Latinos. He constantly overdelivers and improves his performance from what it was the time before. 

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In 2016, according to exit polls, Trump got 28% of the Latino vote. In 2020, he got 32%. And now, in 2024, it’s 46%.

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Moreover, Trump did well with all the separate tribes that make up the 62 million Latinos who live in the United States. He won with Mexican Americans in South Texas, with Puerto Ricans in Eastern Pennsylvania, and Cuban Americans in South Florida.

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When it comes to la politica, Latinos are a complicated bunch. 

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We’re much more likely to register as Democrats by a 2-1 margin, and yet — at least since the 1990’s — we’ve shown a willing to cross party lines and vote for Republicans that we liked. See: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain etc.

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We’re proud of our heritage, but we also assimilate like crazy. We identify with our individual subsets (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, etc.) andsee ourselves as full-fledged Americans who will not tolerate being treated as anything less. But don’t refer to us as “Latinx.”

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We’re not single-issue voters unless that issue is respect, which we demand from both parties. Immigration is not at the top of our list of concerns. The economy comes first. Yet, we will get worked up over an immigration crackdown that targets us all.

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Here’s a twist. In any election — presidential or otherwise — after the ballots are counted, things are supposed to come into focus. But with Latinos, the image is still blurry. Ideally, election returns should provide answers. Ours only raise more questions.

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What’s going on with Latino voters, and how will it shape American politics? Did this once loyal bloc of Democratic voters really become much more conservative — and, if so, how and why? Or is it closer to the truth to say that Latinos have always been right of center, and we’re only now noticing it? Is this just a small part of a much larger political realignment in America, or is this rightward drift more or less unique to Latinos? Finally, could these notorious swing voters swing back to the center, or even the left of center? 

Personally, I think the media has this story all wrong. What else is new, right? Latinos account for 20% of Americans, and 10% of the voters in this election. We’re neither black nor white, and so we’re invisible to the so-called journalists at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, Fox News and all the media outlets. Then every four years, they suddenly discover us and tell us that we’re going to pick the next president. But once we make our choice — if that pick does jive with the one they had already chosen for us — then the insults start rolling in. 

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In the first few days after the election, Latinos became the piñata for angry liberals, furious lefties and frustrated Democrats. Latinos were pummeled for having the temerity to run off the liberal hacienda and bite the hand that feeds them. 

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Whoa! Time out. Don’t get it twisted, America. Latinos work harder than any other racial or ethnic group in this country. Whether they’re picking the vegetables, cooking them up in the kitchen or serving them up on a plate, it’s Latinos who are feeding liberal Democrats — and everyone else. Not the other way around. 

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I digress. As a Latino journalist, I will not hesitate to defend my people against unfair attacks by assholes intoxicated by ignorance, prejudice and meanness. And I don’t care which party those assholes belong to. 

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Over the last few decades, working as an opinion writer in the Southwest, most of the attacks on Latinos that I’ve fended off have come from white conservatives. Some were racists who believe — as president-elect Donald Trump does — that the United States is being invaded by Latino immigrants who are “poisoning” the country as well as bringing crime, usurping benefits and taking jobs from Americans. 

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That reminds me. I have a friend who grows avocados, mandarin oranges and wine grapes on 70 acres in north San Diego County. He wanted me to tell you, and all U.S. citizens, that he’s hiring pickers to work on his farm. Now don’t crowd. Not everyone at once.

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I digress again. Now that Trump has run the board with Latino voters, and discovered — in the spirit of the old UPS commercial — what brown can do for him, it’s a new world. And I get to fend off attacks by a new group that — when they don’t get their way — can be just as ignorant, prejudiced and mean as white conservatives: white liberals.  

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Oh, and since Harris is a Black woman who enjoyed very strong support from other Black women — even as she lost the votes of 25% of Black men — this quickly turned into a race thing. 

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That’s right. In a move that should give Latinos a decent shot at the Nobel Peace Prize, we actually managed to unite Blacks and whites in a shared hatred for Latinos. As far as both groups are concerned, we are now Public Enemy No. 1. All of us, whether we voted for Trump or not.

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I’m in the “not” camp. I did not vote for Trump. As the son of a retired cop who spent 37 years on the job, I’ll never forgive him or the GOP for the attack on the U.S. Capitol that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021. That day, more than 100 police officers were injured by the MAGA mob.

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But nor did I vote for Harris, who I recognized early on was a flawed candidate who ran a terrible campaign and only approached Latinos in the most insulting and superficial ways. 

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“¡Si se puede!” Harris said to Latino audiences. This person was the same Biden “border czar” who went to Guatemala to tell desperate migrants with limited options not to go north and threatened them with deportation if they did. As the daughter of immigrants, Harris also promised to all but end the asylum process for would-be refugees.  
   
Nevertheless, judging from the vitriolic jabs on television and social media, the Black-and-white alliance considers Latino support for Trump an outright betrayal. In the minds of many, Latinos — especially Latino men — are sexist and racist. It’s really as simple as that. They were never going to support a Black woman for president.

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MSNBC host Joe Scarborough — who has never had much to say about Latinos from NBC studios in New York and Washington or his home in Connecticut — is now suddenly an expert on the demographic group. “A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with black candidates,” Scarborough said on his show. 

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His fellow MSNBC host Joy Reid, who is Black, also blasted Latino men for not voting how she wanted them to vote. “Latino men, who, despite the utter disrespect shown by Trump and his promise to deport some of your mixed-status families, most of them voted in a 55-percent majority to make the deportations happen,” she said. “So you own everything that happens to your mixed-status families and to your wives, sisters, and abuelas from here on in.”

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Hey, can we please leave our abuelas out of this?

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Arrogant, presumptuous and condescending is not a good look — especially not for someone who is part of a marginalized group. How do Black folks like it when they think for themselves and white liberals scold them for it? That’s right. They don’t like it. Well, neither do we. It’s disrespectful. 

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If Black-and-white Democrats want to be angry with someone, they ought to direct their fury at Harris, those who ran her campaign, and the bigwigs who control the Democratic Party. All those folks made tons of mistakes, and they did poorly with voters across the board. 

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Here are just a few of the low-lights. The Harris handlers sequestered their candidate, keeping her away from interviews that could do more harm than good. Harris couldn’t communicate effectively, and she laid out her policy proposals in complicated and wonky language. She didn’t separate herself from President Biden, even though nearly 80% of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.

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One of the biggest mistakes that Democrats made was falling out of step with Latinos over the last 40 years. At this point, those on the left don’t have the foggiest idea who we are, what we care about, or how to speak to us. They actually think that we look to Latino celebrities for cues about how to vote. Is there any group that is more detached from normal, everyday, working-class Latinos? 

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Worse, the lefties and the liberals don’t care enough to learn any different. They must think: “Why should we change?” After all, according to the narrative they spin, Latinos are the broken ones.

Not true. We’re not the problem, folks. It’s you. Obviously. 

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Liberal Democrats were the last ones to see it but the truth is that Latinos have always been “Republican-ish.” We’re mostly Democrats, but conservative Democrats. It was a short walk to the GOLionel Sosa had it right. Back in the 1980’s, the Mexican-American advertising veterano basically invented the industry of Latino marketing. He also dabbled in political consulting, and many of his clients were Republican. 

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Sosa once told me about a memorable exchange he had with President Reagan during the Gipper’s 1984 re-election campaign. He told Reagan that he was ready to work hard to convince Latinos to vote Republican. 

“I appreciate your help,” Reagan told him. “But you won’t have to work that hard. They already are Republicans. They just don’t know it.”

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Well, four decades later, they’ve figured it out. So has everyone else. 
                                                                                                                            

Ruben Navarrette — a regular contributor to Latino Magazine — is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate , writer of the Navarrette Nation newsletter at Substack, author of A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano, a contributor of video commentary to Straight Arrow News, host of the podcast, “Ruben In The Center” and a popular speaker on the lecture circuit.