By Bill Wilson
A former Clinton pollster’s dire warning to Democrats on the substantial Latino shift toward conservatives is bringing to the mainstream a demographic reality that many in the party are utterly unprepared for.
Mark Penn, who was a pollster and advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as former New York City Counsil president Andrew Stein, recently penned a warning to Democrats in the Washington Post about President Donald Trump’s widespread – and growing – appeal to Latino voters.
One of the most substantial swings in the 2024 election that solidified President Trump’s second term victory and win of the popular vote for the first time for a Republican in two decades was a monumental shift among Hispanics.
This shift was even more pronounced in swing states – which tend to be more ethnically diverse in the first place. As Penn and Stein point out, Latinos supported Joe Biden by 23 points over Trump four years ago, but Harris’ lead over Trump was whittled down to a mere five points. This represents an eighteen-point shift toward Trump, a shift much larger than Trump’s gains among any other racial group.
As the authors warn, Latinos played a pivotal role in diverse battleground states that flipped toward Trump. In Nevada, for example, their analysis estimates that the Latino shift from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 amounted to roughly 84,188 votes, helping turn the battleground state red for the first time since George W. Bush won it in 2004.
A similar, if smaller, pattern played out with Latino voters in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. In Michigan the Latino share of the vote doubled and moved from an 11-point edge for Biden in 2020 to a 21-point advantage for Trump in 2024, according to the Penn and Stein’s analysis.
The Latino vote nationwide was so substantial in Trump’s favor, that according to Penn and Stein’s analysis, if the Latino vote shift toward Trump was erased, Kamala Harris would have won the presidency with 293 electoral votes.
For Democrats, that must be a searing realization – for all their vilification of the white voter, Latinos deserting the radical left in droves is what put the final nail in the coffin for Harris.
There are two other important pieces to this conversation. The first is the significant correlation between young and Hispanic voters shifting to the right. Young people, specifically Gen Z, formed the bulk of the shift toward Trump compared to other age groups in the most diverse battleground states.
In Florida, Texas, and Nevada, all three of which have Latino populations between 27 and 39 percent according to the U.S. Census, Trump saw substantial shifts among both young and Latino voters.
Trump gained twelve points in Florida among Latinos according to CNN exit polls and with voters 18-24 Trump shaved off eleven points from Harris’s margin over him compared to Biden’s margin over him in 2020.
In Texas, Trump gained fourteen points among Latinos, and Harris’ margin over Trump among young voters shrank by eighteen points compared to Biden’s margin over Trump four years ago.
Trump also gained fourteen points with Latinos in Nevada, and Harris’ margin over Trump with voters 18-24 shrank by eleven points compared to Biden’s margin over Trump four years ago.
We’ve covered before how the Hispanic voter population is significantly “younger” than the non-Hispanic population, and how younger minorities – and less-established voters – are much less likely to vote for Democrats than older and more established minorities are.
A 2024 survey from UnidosUS found that almost 40 percent of the Latino electorate in 2024 were “new voters” who had participated in only one or two presidential election cycles, and newer registered Latinos were much less likely to be Democrats than voters who had been in the voter pool for several election cycles.
Just 45 percent of newer voters identified as Democrats in 2024 according to the report, compared to 59 percent of more established voters. Newer voters were also much more likely to be independent (36 percent) compared to older voters (18 percent).
The report also noted that newer voters – which skew to the right – are significantly younger than the rest of the electorate. The report found that for newer voters who had only voted in one or two election cycles, 80 percent of them were age 39 or younger in the 2024 election.
How this all ties together is that Latinos are growing as a share of the population, they are younger, and they are voting more conservative. Even if immigration reform tapers off, the Latino vote is younger than the native Anglo population on average, and starting families at a higher rate.
The fact that younger Latinos are also much less likely to buy the Democrat Party’s bait and switch reveals that there are plenty of opportunities for conservatives to make their case, especially on economic issues, border security, and limited government.
The second piece of this puzzle is that the Latino population in the country is likely even larger than we are aware of. This results from the way the U.S. Census calculates Latino ancestry, with individuals being asked to self-identify as Latino or as another ethnic group. Evidence shows that the Latino vote is undercounted, because many individuals with Latino heritage do not nessearily identify with the label on the census.
While the census estimates that 54.6 million Americans self-identified as Hispanic in the 2020 census, the census estimates that a total of 62.1 million Latinos live in the country.
What this means is the Latino vote is larger than the census bureau has confirmed, it skews significantly younger than the Anglo population, Latinos are more likely to be concentrated in swing-states and to make those states swing states, and Latinos are shifting toward the right.
This does not mean that overall, the Latino vote is solidly Republican – but it does throw a wrench in the left’s early 2000’s “demographic destiny” plan, which had prominent Democrats theorizing an increase in Latino voters would pave their way to endless political victories.
Latinos are shaping up to be a swing voter block that is currently swinging toward the right. Demographic destiny is backfiring big-time, and Democrats are caught scrambling to understand where they went wrong. We’ll see if they manage to untangle themselves from the clutch of globalism and reverse their catastrophic losses by the next election – but I’m not holding my breath.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
