Source: Politics
AUSTIN — Texas. Florida. Pennsylvania. Colorado. Arizona. Nevada. California.
The historic landslide of Latino voters toward Democrats hit battleground after battleground Tuesday, crumbling the coalition that helped carry President Donald Trump to victory just one cycle ago.
“This is an earthquake,” Democratic Latino operative Sergio Gonzalez told POLITICO on the sidelines of Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa’s victory party in Austin. “Latinos were angry. They were angry this election.”
While the entire country shifted toward Democrats, nowhere shifted as dramatically as predominantly Latino areas. Across the nation Latino voters of all backgrounds — Mexican Americans and Central Americans in the Southwest, heartland and on the West Coast, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Pennsylvania, Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Florida — unhappy with the economy and furious over Trump’s immigration enforcement fled the party in droves.
In a single cycle, Democrats appeared to reset Republicans’ gradual decade-long gains with Latino voters.
Latino voters who “broke for President Trump in historical numbers [in 2024] … had to make a hard change because their paycheck wasn’t moving fast and far enough for them,” said Trump’s former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in an interview Tuesday night. “And Republicans ran out of runway on that.”
The epicenter of the earthquake was Texas, where a turnout surge — especially among younger first-time Latino voters — helped Democrats sweep Texas’ statewide offices — the first time since 1994 they’ve won any at all. Republicans won only one of the five House seats they had gerrymandered.
“What we’re seeing today is a political realignment,” said Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who romped to a 30-point victory Tuesday night in a newly redrawn district Trump carried by double digits two years ago.
“Republicans were renting the Hispanic vote — yet governed like they owned it,” said Giancarlo Sopo, the GOP strategist behind Trump’s viral2020 Spanish-language campaign jingle.
But Democrats have been here before. Then President Barack Obama and his Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton posted similarly strong numbers with Latinos, before Trump’s blue-collar populism helped break through for the GOP.
Some Democrats warn that their party should not misread this week’s results to assume that Latinos are once again loyal Democratic voters.
“Tonight ought to scare the hell out of both political parties,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, on Tuesday. “Americans are running out of patience, and the politicians who keep mistaking their votes for unconditional loyalty are going to find themselves unemployed.”
Latinos’ swing right two years ago had been fueled by frustration over inflation combined with some voters’ dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s border policy. A cycle earlier, in 2020, Trump made significant inroads in Florida and Texas as well. But growing economic woes under Trump, combined with his hardline interior immigration enforcement, swung those communities hard this time around.
“In the Hispanic community, the hyper-aggressive ICE raids, I think, will go down as one of the darkest blemishes in modern history,” Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who cruised to reelection Tuesday in a seat Trump had won by 10 points, told POLITICO Tuesday night. “The American people are struggling right now, and and and they delivered a very heavy punishment at the ballot box today.”
Heavily Latino counties swung more toward Democrats than any other type of place, according to preliminary returns. A handful of counties in Texas that are more than 90 percent Latino swung more than 25 points toward Democrats from 2024, the results show. Latino-majority Miami-Dade County in South Florida swung nearly 20 points.If current results hold, roughly half of the 10 Latino Republicans who served in the last Congress won’t be returning, while Democrats’ Latino caucus will grow significantly.
“We put in the hard work. Talk to Latino voters early and often, and they’re showing up,” Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC, told POLITICO. “They trust Democrats more on the economy now. They see us as real champions and fighters.”
Trump won Starr County, Texas — part of Cuellar’s district — with 58 percent of the vote two years ago, the first time in more than a century that a Republican had won a presidential election there. On Tuesday, Democrat James Talarico won 77 percent there.
That county, like many others in the Rio Grande Valley, had long favored Democrats but moved toward the GOP during the Trump era. That’s now all been erased, as Brownsville native Gina Hinojosa will become the first Hispanic governor of Texas since it became a U.S. state. “We’ve called the RGV a bellwether for so long,” Melissa Morales, the executive director of SOMOS PAC, told POLITICO. “But to actually get the first Latina governor of Texas from the RGV I think is a bellwether in its own of what the next generation of leadership looks like.”
In California’s 22nd District, a Central Valley district which is roughly three-quarters Latino, progressive Democrat Randy Villegas was leading incumbent GOP Rep. David Valadao 66%-34% with roughly two-thirds of the vote in. A handful of rural majority-Latino counties in Kansas — Seward, Finney and Ford — that Trump had won by more than 30 points in 2024 were narrowly won by Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. The counties were among those shaken by ICE raids earlier in the fall.
“Recent ICE activity in southwest Kansas turned around the electorate out here,” said Republican state Sen. Bill Clifford, who represents Finney County.
The results are a vindication for Democrats who’ve been clamoring for more investment into Latino voters.
“I think this would be a wake-up call to the Democratic Party in general that investing in Latino outreach, communication, and good candidates makes a big difference, especially in areas that you think were considered red back in the day,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told POLITICO Tuesday night.
Read MorePolitics, DC, James Talarico, Senate: Texas, Governor: Texas, 2026 Elections, Gina Hinojosa, Ruben Gallego