How Trump won the Latino vote despite name calling, mass deportation threats

OAKLAND, Calif. - One of the big drivers in President-Elect Donald Trump's victory was the Latino vote.

Trump received 46% of the Latino vote compared to 35% four years ago, an Associated Press poll shows – the most support Latinos have ever shown a Republican presidential candidate.

And that's despite repeated calls for mass deportations and falsely calling Mexicans "in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc." He has also said that immigrants "poison the blood" of this country. 

California has nearly 16 million Hispanic and Latino residents, the largest ethnic group in the state. And according to the Pew Research Center, there are more than 10 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. 

The economy

Despite all this, Andrés Quintero, political science professor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, explained that what matters to Latinos most is the economy – not immigration. 

"People tend to focus on immigration as the number one priority for Latinos," Quintero said. "It actually falls down to fourth or fifth."

Quintero said that it's not surprising that as inflation rises and the purchasing power drops for Latinos, many of whom are working class or living in poverty, they gravitate toward someone "who is promising them answers."

"It seems like Latinos have bought into the message," he said. 

In addition, Quintero noted, the Black vote increased for Trump by 5% from last time, "so it seems like Latinos are not alone." 

What about mass deportations?

Quintero said that Trump's call to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country the U.S. is at war with and calling in the National Guard, is "just a lot of rhetoric." 

"It really helps him out with his voter base that he wants to reach out to in the Midwest, places that are far away from the border," Quintero said. "Additionally, also the ones that are being impacted by the issues that are taking place right at the border, the places where people need workers." 

He said that Trump will ultimately be persuaded to see the benefits of immigrants, who provide an immediate workforce and he surmised there would be a big pushback of there is any effort to disrupt the economy. 

Long trend of losing Latinos

Mike Madrid, a national political expert on Latino demographics, said the fact that Democrats have been losing Latino voters is a long, generational trend. 

"Democrats have actually been losing Latino voters since the end of the Obama era," Madrid said.

 In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost support. President Joe Biden lost more support. 

"We watched more hemorrhaging happen last night," Madrid pointed out in an interview on Wednesday. 

Diploma divide

Madrid said that this is a big problem for Democrats in what is called a "diploma divide." That's where the college-educated are moving toward the Democratic Party and the blue collar, non-college-educated voters are moving toward the Republican side. 

Reverse effect of immigration debate

Madrid added that there are now many multi-generational Latinos living in the United States, especially in California.

And the third- and fourth-generation Latinos aren't "very tied to the immigration experience," Madrid said. "And when they hear regularly that immigration, especially from the Democratic Party, is a key issue, it's having the reverse effect of actually alienating these voters and pushing them to this economic pocketbook voter, this economic populist place. And Donald Trump represents the most populist candidate in the race and is winning more of their votes."

That said, Madrid said that Vice President Kamala Harras ran on the most conservative border security position for a Democrat in the history of the party.

She ran, he said, essentially on a platform of building a wall, cracking down on international gangs and stopping drug flows of fentanyl across the border. She even talked about going to the border and taking pictures. 

"This is something that Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, would have never imagined doing," Madrid said. "And the reason why the Democrats are having to do it is because Latino voters are increasingly supporting border security positions at the expense of what we used to call immigration reform." 

What can the Democrats do to win back the Latino vote?

Madrid suggested that if the Democrats want the Latinos back, they need to talk to them in blue-collar, working-class terms. He also said Democrats should shift to issues that really matter to Latinos, like focusing on home building and home buying programs, noting that 1 in 5 Hispanic men are involved in the construction industry and the building trades. 

Harris actually did address these issues, Madrid pointed out, but she only had 100 days in her campaign to make that adjustment. 

"After two decades of really bad messaging and losing working class voters," Madrid said, "Kamala Harris just didn't have the time to make up that difference."