President Donald Trump and his Republican allies made significant inroads with Latino voters in Tuesday's election, alarming some Democrats who warned that immigration politics alone was not enough to hold their edge with the nation's largest minority group.
Trump's strong performance with Cuban Americans in South Florida narrowed the traditional Democratic edge in Miami-Dade County and helped put Florida in Trump's column early Tuesday. In Texas, Trump won tens of thousands of new supporters in predominantly Mexican American communities along the border.
A GOP win in a heavily Latino New Mexico congressional district suggested a surge of Republican-leaning support there. And even in Nevada, where Democrats' strength among Latinos had powered the party to dominance, there were some signs of new Trump support among Latinos frustrated at the economic toll of coronavirus-related shutdowns. Democrat Joe Biden and Trump were still locked in a tight race there as officials counted the vote.
Democrats had hoped this would be the year when their strength among Latino voters would translate into victories in Florida and Texas, a game-changer that would reshape presidential politics. But Trump's margins dashed those hopes and prompted debate on whether the party was taking Latino voters' support for granted.
"It was tighter than all of us wanted," said Chuck Rocha, a former strategist for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign dominated with Latino voters during the Democratic primary. "Until we start treating Latinos as a diverse and not monolithic group, Democrats are going to lose more and more of them."
The overwhelming majority of Trump's support comes from white voters, not Latinos, who remained heavily Democratic. But even small shifts in a population can have huge repercussions in an almost evenly divided country.
Biden still won a sizable majority of Latino voters — 63% nationwide, compared to Trump's 35%, according to AP VoteCast, a massive survey of the electorate. But Trump was able to shave that margin somewhat in some competitive states, like Florida and Nevada.
Trump's appeal to Latino voters is no surprise to veteran political observers in those states. Trump's emphasis on jobs and economic growth got the attention of at least some in a group of voters that has been disproportionately hit by the pandemic and ensuing plunge in business.