Where is the crucial Latino vote headed in this year’s presidential-election cycle?

Last Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Maria Teresa Kumar, founding president and CEO of Voto Latino, a Democratic Party-aligned organization that works to register Hispanic voters, took the stage and argued that “when Latinos vote, Democrats win.” 

As evidence, she cited former president Barack Obama’s successes with the group in his 2008 victories in Sunbelt states, as well as the 1.5 million voters her organization has registered since its inception in 2004. She also accused Republicans of attempting to “suppress” the Latino vote this election cycle to boost their chances of victory.

But polling data in recent years paints a more complex picture than what Kumar laid out at the DNC. Hispanic voters, the majority of whom are Catholic, have drifted toward Trump and the GOP since his rise to political prominence in 2015. Statistical and anecdotal evidence suggest these voters have become increasingly aligned with Trump’s policy positions on the economy, education, cultural values and even immigration, including substantial support for Trump’s border-wall project and mass deportations. 

And while early polling suggests the ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket has blunted Republican momentum with these voters — a recent poll has Harris winning 55% of Hispanics, which is an improvement over President Joe Biden’s level of support, though still well beneath the 71% support received by Obama in 2012 — the GOP’s gains have the potential to play a decisive role in the upcoming election. 

Already the nation’s largest minority group, Hispanic Americans now make up 19.5% of the total U.S. population, according to the 2020 census, up from 7% in 1980. The group — which comprises people with unique heritage from Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and beyond — is often mischaracterized as monolithic. The percentage of Catholic Hispanics has declined in recent years while other religious groups have held steady. The number of “religiously unaffiliated” Hispanics has increased, by contrast, mirroring the trend in the overall population. 

This would appear to be good news for the Democratic Party, which has increasingly championed secular values in recent decades while casting off signs of religious belief in both style and substance. 

However, Hispanic Americans have increasingly voted for the Republican Party in recent years. In 2020, Trump saw his share of the Hispanic vote rise to 38%, up from 28% in 2016. Similar gains were made by the GOP during the past two midterm elections, which saw their vote share increase to 39% in 2022, up from 25% in 2018. 

 

Shift Among Catholics

Recent polling suggests the overall Hispanic voter shift toward the GOP is most pronounced among self-identified Catholics. A Washington Post/ABC News poll from mid-August shows that 47% of Hispanic Catholics intend to vote for Trump in the upcoming election, a marked increase from the 32% of Hispanic Catholics who voted for Trump in 2020. The same poll showed a minor drop in support for Trump among white Catholics.

This has confounded Democratic strategists who have long argued that “demographics are destiny,” meaning that a decrease in white voters would put Republicans at a perpetual electoral disadvantage, while an increase in minority voters would bring in an era of electoral dominance for Democrats. 

According to Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement at the American Principles Project (APP), a conservative advocacy group that focuses on social issues, the unexpected move toward Republicans in the Trump era is a repudiation of the Democrats’ strategy of reducing Hispanic voters to the color of their skin instead of appealing to core values held by many.

“The big mistake the Democrats have made is they’ve failed to recognize the diversity of ideas within the Hispanic community,” Aguilar told the Register. “There’s a big segment of the population that shares conservative principles. Now, these voters may not publicly say that they are Republicans or conservatives, but their principles are. They are breaking with the Democrats on the issues, on social issues, the economy and immigration.”

In March, the American Principles Project released a poll that found a majority of Hispanic voters now disagree with the Democratic Party’s positions on a variety of social issues. The poll, which was conducted by OnMessage Inc., surveyed 500 likely general-election Hispanic voters in the swing states of Nevada and North Carolina, with a margin of error of 4.38%. It found that 57% support banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transgender-identifying children under the age of 18, for instance, and 64% support laws that require schools to notify parents if their child begins identifying as transgender. 

 

Abortion and Immigration

Perhaps no single issue places a broad majority of the Hispanic population outside of the Democratic mainstream than abortion. While Hispanics have generally become more permissive on abortion over time — a recent Pew study found that only 28% of Hispanics age 18 to 29 believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, which is a steep drop from other age groups — the APP’s poll found that 67% support limiting abortion after 12 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest, danger to the life of the mother, and severe birth defects. The Democratic Party does not currently call for any limits on abortion. 

“What it shows is that Hispanics are very similar to the American public,” Aguilar said. “The old abortion rhetoric of pro-life and pro-choice doesn’t mean anything to them. In fact, a majority might identify as pro-choice. But when you ask them about specific policies, they are very much for restricting abortion.”

Luis Fortuño, the Catholic former Republican governor of Puerto Rico, also sees a disconnect between Hispanic voters and the values of the Democratic Party as causes for elevated levels of support for the GOP in recent years, particularly in relation to indoctrination in schools and removing God from all aspects of public life. 

But he cites two other issues as the primary cause behind elevated Hispanic support for the GOP in recent years: the economy, particularly inflation, and the perception of strong leadership offered by Trump, especially on the issue of immigration.

“In the Hispanic community, we want strong leaders,” he told the Register. “We don’t want weak leadership. The lack of control at the border with the disastrous results we’ve seen — illegal immigration doubled in Biden’s first year — doesn’t help anyone. Those who are here, who waited in line and went through the process, don’t appreciate it. We all want and need immigration for the economy to grow, but it has to be controlled. We have to know who is coming in.”

An Axios/Ipsos poll released in April found that 42% of Hispanic adults now favor building a wall along the southern border, a 12-point increase from a poll taken in 2021. In addition, 38% now favor sending all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. back to their country of origin, which represents a 10-point increase in that same time. These findings mirror the shift in the overall population in recent years. 

 

Education

Another issue that has drawn Hispanic voters toward the GOP is education. According to an EdChoice poll, support among Hispanics for education alternatives such as charter schools, vouchers and educational savings accounts has ballooned in recent years. 

Valeria Gurr, a former Catholic and first-generation American from Chile and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice and educational freedom, is among this growing cohort of Hispanic parents. 

“It’s offensive to me that the only thing Democrats think we care about is immigration,” Gurr told the Register. “Once you live in the U.S. for a certain amount of time, this becomes your home, and you have to think about your kids and their future. I’m looking to see how my kids are going to have it better than me.”

After immigrating to the U.S. for graduate school, Gurr went to work for the teacher’s unions in her home state of Nevada. After nearly two years, Gurr became convinced the unions were interested only in their own power, not in fixing public education. This, along with the nation’s rapidly plummeting scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “report cards,” particularly among Hispanic students, motivated Gurr to advocate for educational choice. 

“Education should have never been a political issue,” she said. “It’s not that I’m trying to endorse a party versus the other one. But as it stands right now, Republicans are openly supporting freedom in education and Democrats aren’t. In my state, there’s not one Democrat who openly supports school choice. I was shocked to see that because the Democratic Party was supposed to be for the working class. 

“I just keep waiting for Democrats to do the right thing and choose my family over the teacher’s union agenda, and they don’t.”