From Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, areas with large numbers of Hispanics often had little in common on Election Day other than supporting Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris for president.
MIAMI (AP) — From Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, areas with large numbers of Hispanics often had little in common on Election Day other than supporting Republicans Donald Trump above Democrat Kamala Harris for chairman.
Trump, the president-elect, pushed into heavily Puerto Rican areas of eastern Pennsylvania, where the vice president spent the last full day of her campaign. Trump turned the Rio Grande Valley into South Texas, a decades-long Democratic stronghold populated by newer immigrants as well as Tejanos, who trace their roots to the state for generations.
He also improved his standing with Hispanic voters along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor, which connects the Tampa Bay area — home to people of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian and Puerto Rican descent — with Orlando, where Puerto Ricans have about 43 % of the local Spanish-speaking population. population. Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County, home to a sizable Cuban population and the nation’s metropolitan area with the highest share of immigrants.
It was a realignment that, if sustained, could change American politics.
Texas and Florida are already reliably Republican, but more Hispanics turning away from Democrats in future presidential races could further dent the party’s “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which had helped propel the party to White House to catapult before Trump swept through all three parties. this time. The shift could even make it harder for Democrats to win in the West, in states like Arizona and Nevada.
Harris sought to highlight the ways in which Trump is alleged to have insulted or threatened Latinos.
Trump has during his first term has curtailed its use by Temporary protected statusreached by Democratic President Joe Biden thousands of Venezuelansand tried to end the Obama era Deferred action for child arrivals program. He too the release postponed from emergency aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 to nearly the end of his term, after long labeling the island’s officials as corrupt and incompetent.
Once he returns to the White House, Trump has promised to… largest deportation operation in American history. That could impact millions of families in mixed-status homes, where people living in the United States illegally live with U.S. citizens or legal residents.
But the Democratic warnings did not seem to get through to enough voters for Harris. Now the party must figure out how to win back votes from a critical, fast-growing group.
“Trump, he is a very confusing figure,” said Abel Prado, a Democratic operative and pollster who is executive director of the advocacy group Cambio Texas. “We have no idea how to organize against him. We have no idea how to respond. We have no idea how not to take the bait.”
Ultimately, concerns about immigration did not resonate with many Hispanics as much as wallet concerns.
About seven in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, slightly more than about two-thirds of voters overall, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Nearly two-thirds of Spanish voters said they were “very concerned” about their housing costs, compared to about half of voters overall.
Trump had a clear lead among Hispanic voters who were “very concerned” about food costs. Half said he could do a better job of handling the economy, compared with about 4 in 10 for Harris. Among Hispanic voters who were deeply concerned about crime in their communities, Trump had a similar advantage.
“When they looked at both candidates, they saw who could improve our economy and the quality of life,” said Marcela Diaz-Myers, a Colombian immigrant who led a Hispanic outreach task force for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. ‘Has he been insulting? Yes. But that happens in political campaigns. Many of the people who voted for President Trump could move past this and trust that he will move the country in the right direction.”
Harris promised to lower food prices cracking down on corporate price increases and increasing federal funding for first-time homebuyers. Also recent figures on violent crime have decreased in many parts of the country.
Shen also spent much of the final days of the campaign trying to capitalize to comments made by a comedian speaking at a Trump rally in New York and joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of trash.” She even leaned on Puerto Rican celebrities – from Bad bunny Unpleasant Jennifer Lopez – disapprove of racism.
But Trump nonetheless gained ground in some of the areas with the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the state where Harris spent more time campaigning than any other. He won Berks, Monroe and Luzerne counties — and lost Lehigh County by fewer than 5,000 votes to Harris. Biden nearly tripled the margin in 2020.
Leave a Reply