Latinos have become a new battleground frontier for political candidates

By Bryan Mena, CNN

Washington (CNN) — For Eduardo Sanchez, it is “difficult to vote for a candidate you can’t stomach as a Latino.” But the independent voter cast a ballot for Donald Trump this year, after voting for Joe Biden in 2020, pointing to the sharp rise in the cost of living since Biden took office.

“You’ve only been surviving these past four years after so many prices picked up, from rent to services,” Sanchez, who owns a computer repair shop in San Francisco, told CNN in a Spanish interview. “Democrats are not working for the entire community, just themselves.”

Sanchez, a naturalized immigrant from Nicaragua, said Trump’s comments against immigrants and calls for mass deportations “don’t make him seem like a good person,” but the effects of inflation on his family and his business over the past few years made up his mind.

Republicans in this year’s US presidential election gained ground with Latino voters, a fast-growing electorate in which more than a million become old enough to vote each year. Their votes proved pivotal in battleground states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Many of those voters, dissatisfied with inflation’s eruption since the pandemic, voted for Trump in a rebuke to Biden. They likely won’t feel any meaningful relief under a second Trump term, experts say, which means Democrats still have a chance to bring those voters back into the fold — if they craft the right messaging on the economy.

What drove the shift

Trump campaigned on cutting taxes, paring back the size of the federal government and rolling out a series of tax breaks, including on tips and Social Security — policies that may have struck a cord with the Latino voters who flocked to Trump this time around.

Vice President Kamala Harris still secured the majority of votes from Latinos, according to an AP VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, but her margin was notably weaker than Biden’s in 2020.

During the 2022 midterm season, there were already signs of Latinos becoming frustrated with the Democratic Party over high inflation, especially in cities with businesses that were hit hard by the pandemic. That came to a boil this year. Not only did Trump win over more Latinos compared to his 2020 performance, but he also successfully courted low-to-middle-income voters with economic anxieties, according to AP VoteCast survey data.

“Latinos don’t believe that the Democratic Party is going to materially improve their lives from an affordability standpoint,” Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist who studies Latino voting behavior, told CNN. He said the rightward shift among Latinos has been taking shape as early as the 2012 election.

Nikki Garcia, who works for the federal government as an editor, said she voted for Trump this year because “he was more clear in what he wants to do for the economy.”

Garcia, whose family is from Cuba, said her vote was also informed by the fact that she’s saved less and less as prices picked up and she had to deal with an unexpected medical cost.

“I just wanted a clear, simple plan to attack things in the economy (rather) than to focus on social justice,” the 42-year-old who lives in Central Florida told CNN.

Trump’s policies likely won’t improve Latino lives

All eyes will be on the economy during Trump’s second administration. Various forecasts have pointed to the possibility of inflation getting worse and the national debt swelling further.

“Latinos are not going to benefit from Trump’s economic policy,” said Monica Garcia-Perez, an economics professor at Fayetteville State University.

She echoed the view of other economists who have said that Trump’s hefty across-the-board tariffs would just stoke inflation and inflict other costs on Americans.

The president-elect’s campaign on Monday announced massive tariff hikes on goods coming from Mexico, Canada and China that would start on the first day of his administration.

An analysis from left-leaning think tank Third Way released before the announcement showed that Trump’s earlier proposal could result in “at least $185 more a year for groceries and $551 more at a big-box store.” A Tax Policy Center analysis, which was also released before the announcement, showed that an aggressive version of Trump’s tariffs could increase a US household’s tax burden by an average of $2,940 in 2025.

Garcia-Perez said that Latinos would feel the economic pain from Trump’s agenda more acutely.

“Around 20% of US goods can be traced back to imports, and those imports are generally consumed by the low-income population, and Latinos have a large proportion of low-income communities,” she said.

Trump also touted sweeping tax breaks, including eliminating levies on tips, overtime pay and Social Security. However, these wide-ranging tax promises, which also include extending his 2017 tax cuts, would amount to more than $7 trillion at a time when some investors have expressed concern over the country’s swelling national debt.

A Brookings Institution analysis showed that eliminating taxes on tips would be far from a silver bullet. Many tipped workers don’t make enough to pay income taxes, so they wouldn’t benefit from the tax break and could even receive fewer federal benefits. There’s also the possibility that relief gets snatched by their employer.

“Employers might simply cut workers’ base pay, pocketing the would-be gains for themselves,” the analysis said.

Can Democrats win back the Latinos they lost?

A majority of Latino voters don’t feel beholden to any party and prioritize issues over candidates, according to a report from the Latino Donor Collaborative.

That means Latinos have become a new battleground frontier for candidates.

Ana Valdez, president of the Latino Donor Collaborative, said that Republicans made a greater investment in Latino voters this year, which included booking Spanish-language ads as well as pointing to high inflation. She said Democrats took those voters for granted.

“Latinos are very worried about their upward mobility — not just ones who are blue collar, but also middle-class Latinos,” Valdez said.

She said Democrats needed to do a better job “communicating their successes so that they can start earning a much better reputation on how they manage the economy.”

But Carlos Odio, a Democratic political strategist, said that if Trump does anything that “makes him seem out of touch, then you could easily see a lot of those voters swing back (to Democrats).”

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