Donald Trump could win more Latino votes than he and other Republican presidential candidates have done in the past, recent polls show.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for the upcoming presidential election has improved his polling among Hispanic voters, meaning he could outperform previous Republican presidential candidates.
Hispanic voters, alongside other previously disenfranchised ethnic minorities, were granted the right to suffrage under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The legislation enabled this demographic to vote in the 1968 presidential election and all succeeding elections.
An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential election, up almost 4 million from 2020, Pew Research Center data showed. Latinos are projected to account for 14.7 percent of all eligible voters this year, up from 13.6 percent in 2020.
In 2020, Trump won 32 percent of Latino votes, while Democratic candidate Joe Biden won 65 percent of the demographic. The Republican saw an increase in support from 2016, when he received 28 percent of the vote.
According to recent polls, Trump could again increase this share of the vote in November's poll. Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump for comment by email.
A New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,532 likely voters found that Biden had only a 1 percent lead over Trump among this demographic, with 47 percent saying they would vote for Biden and 46 percent saying they would vote for Trump.
The survey, conducted between June 28 and July 2, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
If this polling is correct, Trump will not only beat his previous performance but also win a larger share of Hispanic votes than any other Republican since 1972, according to data analysis by Pew Research Center.
Newsweek was unable to source voting data by demographics for the 1968 election, but in 1972, Richard Nixon received 40 percent of the Latino vote, most estimates show. In 1976, 18 percent of Hispanic voters opted to vote for the presidential candidate Gerald Ford. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 1984, he increased this share of the vote to 37 percent. In 1988, George H.W. Bush won 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, which decreased to 25 percent in 1992.
Four years later, in 1996, Bob Dole won 21 percent of the vote share, and George W. Bush won 35 percent in 2000. In 2004, Bush received 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, and John McCain won 31 percent of the vote share in 2009. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 27 percent of Latino votes.
Trump has taken steps to court the Hispanic vote in advance of the election. On June 9, he set up an initiative called the "Latino Americans for Trump" coalition, which includes elected officials such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The coalition is meant to appeal to Hispanic voters on matters such as crime and inflation, which the Trump campaign describes as "issues where Biden has failed miserably."
"In 2020, we got more votes from Hispanic Americans than any Republican in more than 50 years, and we won the Texas border counties that no Republican candidate had won in more than a century," Trump said.
"In 2024, we're going to win an even larger share of the Hispanic American vote, setting all-time records for Republicans up and down the ballot," he continued.
Speaking to Newsweek, Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and the director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, said it was "clear" that there was a large and growing proportion of Latinos who were "leaning Republican."
"For decades, Democrats have largely assumed that 'demographics is destiny'—that the growing proportion of minorities, including Latinos, would naturally help their party gain a permanent majority in Washington," Gift said. "The reality is much more complicated. While Latinos are a diverse population, and their voting patterns often are a function of the source country of immigration, what's clear is that large (and growing) percentages are leaning Republican."
He added: "The fact that Trump could be on track to win the greatest share of Latino votes of any Republican presidential candidate in history likely speaks less to his own personal appeal among this community than it does to a set of shared beliefs—including on religion and 'traditional' family values—that aren't always stressed in today's modern Democratic Party.
"An often (lazy) assumption by Democrats is still to assume that most Latinos are 'single issue' voters on immigration. That's becoming less and less true over time."
There are still signs Biden may maintain this voting base. In early May, a YouGov poll showed that Biden is the preferred candidate of 45 percent of Hispanic voters, compared to 39 percent for Trump.
The presidential election is scheduled to take place on November 5.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more
