Hispanic Voters' Support for Trump Could Mean Trouble for Dems Republicans vs. Democrats (AP)
By Solange Reyner | Friday, 16 September 2022 01:42 PM EDT
Hispanics voted in greater numbers for former President Donald Trump in 2020, a trend that could spell trouble for Democrats in this year's midterm elections, reports The Washington Examiner.
The growth in Trump's Latino support showed up in 2020 even though the former president lost to Joe Biden in the presidential election, earning the backing of about one in three Hispanic voters nationwide.
Close to 17 million Latino voters turned out in the 2020 general election and Trump won the highest share of the Hispanic vote of any Republican presidential nominee since George W. Bush in 2004.
"They're pro-business, they're pro-gun, they don't like higher taxes, they don't trust the government," Chuck Coughlin, a Republican pollster in Arizona, told the New York Times last year regarding a report that found Trump's Latino support was more widespread than though. "It's the same constituency that you see among Anglo Trump voters."
Top Democratic data guru David Shor after the election said the decline in Hispanic support for Democrats was "pretty broad."
"This isn't just about Cubans in South Florida," he said. "It happened in New York and California and Arizona and Texas."
A poll released earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal shows that things could worse for Democrats this November among the voting bloc, with 37% of Hispanic voters saying they would support a Democrat for Congress compared with 37% who said they would pick a Republican.
Democratic House candidates in 2020 received more than 60% of the Hispanic vote.
Latinos are also turned off by COVID-19 lockdowns, the defund the police movement and progressives' embrace of socialism, per the Washington Examiner.
"The shift among Hispanic men was clear, and it seems they were attracted to the strong leadership that President Trump offered," Republican pollster Neil Newhouse previously told the Washington Examiner. "That movement sped up in the '20 cycle as part of the national debate revolved around the Democrats' lurch toward socialistic policies."