Minorities moved towards Trump

By any objective measure Trump has said things which are racist, selective bans on Muslims entering America, ‘shit hole countries,’ immigrants eating cats and dogs as well as being rapists and murderers, so surly in an America more diverse than at any point in its history, the minority vote should have gone overwhelmingly to Harris, but it didn’t, or at least not overwhelmingly.

Over the years the Democrat party and its candidate for the presidency could rely on being the party of minorities and immigrants. For much of the 20th Century, the Democrats were the dominant party based on their mobilisation of a coalition established by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, liberals, unions, southern whites, the urban poor as well as immigrants and minorities. Although this coalition had lost its dominance as the South became increasingly able to vote Republican and Reagan appealed to the white working class, Democrats running for the presidency could still expect to win the black and Latino vote. While  George W. Bush in 2004  won 44% of Latino votes he was the most successful republican candidate in history among Latino voters. Trump only won 28% in 2016.  In 2024 Trump’s Latino vote share was still only 45 percent but it surpassed George Bush.

Overall across the country, exit polls in 2024 showed a national drop in Democratic voters among those who trace their heritage from south and central America, from 71 per cent in 2012 under Barack Obama to just 53 per cent for Harris. Why? Ronald Reagan had famously declared that ‘Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet’ As Reagan suggested, the answer might be cultural. Latino and Hispanic people tend to oppose abortion, take a tough view on crime and value hard work and self-sufficiency, all good Republican values. The other explanation is the impact of illegal immigration, not just the well-known ‘pull up the draw bridge behind’ sentiment. where recent immigrants resent continued immigration since they are most likely to compete for their jobs and housing resources, but also the resentment of those who have arrived by a legal process for those who jumped the queue. It may also be that to vote for Trump, the anti-immigrant candidate, Latinos are asserting their own Americanness. “There seems to be an attraction to Trump among Latinos, Latino men, that could be a kind of defensive reaction to his aggression and aggressive rhetoric,” said Guillermo Grenier, professor of sociology at Florida International University and the co-author of the book This Land is Our Land: Newcomers and Established Residents in Miami. “It could be they’re saying: ‘I’m not one of them, you know? I’m an American citizen, I’m voting for you, I’m not the rapist scum, I’m not with them. That’s the other guys, the other immigrants, not the voting immigrants.”[89]

It is a mistake to describe the Latino vote as a homogeneous block. The young, men, women, established communities, and those with different national origins vote differently. Carlos Suárez Carrasquillo, political science professor at the University of Florida’s Centre for Latin American Studies asked, “If white males find Trump appealing as a candidate, why wouldn’t Latino males?”[90] Trump won  47 percent of votes among Latino men, according to AP projections. He also produced double-digit gains in majority-Hispanic counties along the Mexico border in Texas and in Southern Florida.

Possibly the most significant impact of Trump’s success among Latino voters was in the key swing states.[91] In Florida Trump won 58% and in North Carolina 50% of the Latino vote. In Pennsylvania, he won 42% of the Latino vote where   Puerto Ricans are the largest group despite Puerto Rico being described as a  “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally barely a week before the election and despite his repeated claims that many immigrants were “drug dealers”, “murderers” and “rapists”, and his promise to conduct the largest deportation effort in US history soon after he takes office. It was not just that Trump appealed to Latino voters more than expected, it was that he appealed to these voters in the states that mattered.

In 2024 while Black voters remained largely loyal to the Democrats, Trump significantly cut into Democrats' margins with Black voters. In the swing state of Wisconsin for example in previous election years, typically about 9-in-10 Black voters in the state backed the Democratic candidate. In 2024, it was only about three-quarters.[92] In the key state of Pennsylvania, Black voters didn't change much overall; they were down marginally for Harris, but in 2020, Black men voted 89%-10% for Biden but in 2024 support among the group for Harris was just 72%-24%. As with Latino voters Trumpism appealed to young men regardless of race. Overall 2024 indicated that the Democrats can no longer rely on being the party of diversity.