Almost 50% of Latinos Voted for Trump in 2024. Experts Have Theories

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A new study from the Pew Research Center shows that, in the 2024 presidential election, a slight majority of Latinos voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris — but they also voted for President Donald Trump at a much higher rate than they did in 2020.

Trump managed to garner 48% of the Latino vote compared to Harris’ 51% share and significantly jumped past the 36% clip that he got during in the 2020 presidential election. The study’s results reveal that the initial 2024 exit polls actually underestimated Latinos’ Trump support, with the Republican candidate tracking at 46% of the Latino vote on Election Day.

Additionally, 47% of naturalized citizens of all ethnic backgrounds voted for Trump in 2024, compared with 38% in 2020. In that same voting bloc 51% voted for Harris in 2024, a notable drop from the 59% who voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Hispanic naturalized citizens recorded a 12% bump in voting for Trump, jumping from 39% in 2020 to 51% in 2024.

Mike Madrid — a political consultant and founding member of the Republican political action committee known as the Lincoln Project — authored the 2024 book “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.” In his prescient writing, Madrid analyzed the oft-misunderstood and misrepresented Latino electorate and highlighted the issues of top priority for the community.

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Journalist Paola Ramos, who authored the 2024 book “Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America,” mirrored Madrid’s lack of surprise at the results.

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In Madrid’s view, the Democratic Party built the disdain for itself through immigration policies — which he points to as one of the main reasons why naturalized citizens may have flipped their party in 2024.

“Biden and Harris adopted a very permissive, very progressive position on the border,” Madrid argued. “There was backlash to it, because [naturalized citizens] were — after having waded many years through a very broken system and playing by the rules — seeing people being rewarded, in their eyes, for coming in around the system that they just navigated.”

Ramos saw that sense of betrayal with the Democratic Party’s false promises on immigration reform as leading to “deep disillusionment” among Latinos, which might have led them to find solace in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

She also examined the psychosocial side of why Latinos have leaned into Trump’s political tactics.

“I think many people tried to run away from being lumped in with immigrants, particularly when Trump was obviously making an entire campaign around criminalizing immigrants,” Ramos said. “If you have a candidate that is spending his entire campaign in demonizing you, then you want to prove as much as you can that you don’t belong to that group. … [There’s also] the idea that once you’ve ‘made it’ in this country, you don’t want others to climb up the same ladder. That is a very real phenomenon.”

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