Latinos became a new battle front for political candidates

Washington () – For Eduardo Sánchez, it is “difficult to vote for a candidate that you cannot stand as a Latino.” But this independent voter cast a vote 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 just been surviving these last four years after a lot of prices went up, from rent to utilities,” Sánchez, owner of a computer repair shop in San Francisco, told in an interview in Spanish. “Democrats are not working for the entire community, just for themselves.”

Sánchez, a naturalized immigrant from Nicaragua, said Trump’s anti-immigrant comments and calls for mass deportations “do not make him seem like a good person,” but the effects of inflation on his family and business in recent years make him made them decide.

In this year’s US presidential election, Republicans gained ground among Latino voters, a rapidly growing electorate in which more than a million people reach voting age each year. Their votes were decisive in close states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Many of those voters, dissatisfied with the emergence of inflation since the pandemic, voted for Trump in a disdain for Biden. They likely won’t feel any significant relief under a second Trump term, experts say, meaning Democrats still have a chance to lure those voters back into their ranks if they craft the right message on the economy.

Trump campaigned on cutting taxes, reducing 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 chord with Latino voters who turned out en masse to Trump on this occasion.

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

During the 2022 midterm election season, there were already signs that Latinos were growing frustrated with the Democratic Party over high inflation, especially in cities with businesses that were hit hard by the pandemic. That came to a boiling point this year. Trump not only won 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 polling 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 . He said the shift to the right among Latinos has been taking shape as early as the 2012 elections.

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

Garcia, whose family is from Cuba, said his vote was also because he saved less and less as prices rose and he had to deal with an unexpected medical expense.

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

All eyes will be on the economy during the second Trump administration. Various forecasts have pointed to the possibility that inflation will worsen and the national debt will swell even further.

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

He echoed other economists who have said Trump’s widespread tariffs would only stoke inflation and inflict other costs on Americans.

The president-elect’s campaign on Monday announced massive tariff increases on goods from Mexico, Canada and China that would begin on his first day in office.

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

García-Pérez said Latinos would feel the economic pain of Trump’s agenda most acutely.

“About 20% of US goods come from imports, and those imports are generally consumed by the low-income population, and Latinos have a large proportion of low-income communities,” he said.

Trump also touted sweeping tax breaks, including the elimination of levies on tips, overtime pay and Social Security. However, these far-reaching fiscal promises, which also include extending his 2017 tax cuts, would amount to more than $7 trillion at a time when some investors have raised concerns about the country’s ballooning national debt.

A Brookings Institution analysis showed that eliminating tip taxes would be far from a silver bullet. Many tipped workers do not earn enough to pay income taxes, so they would not benefit from the tax break and could even receive fewer federal benefits. There is also the possibility that the employer keeps the aid.

“Employers could simply cut workers’ base pay, pocketing potential profits,” the analysis notes.

Most Latino voters do not feel committed to any party and prioritize issues over candidates, according to a report from the Latino Donor Collaborative.

This means that Latinos have become a new battleground for candidates.

Ana Valdez, president of the Latino Donor Collaborative, said Republicans made a bigger investment in Latino voters this year, including running Spanish-language ads as well as pointing out high inflation. He said Democrats took those voters for granted.

“Latinos are very concerned about their upward mobility, not just blue-collar workers, but also middle-class Latinos,” Valdez said.

He said Democrats needed to do a better job “communicating their successes so they can start to earn a much better reputation for 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 with reality, then you could easily see a lot of those voters turn back (to the Democrats).”