Trump’s Win Fueled By Hispanic, Working-Class Voters

 Photo: Reuters

WASHINGTON, DC (Reuters) – Donald Trump reshaped the U.S. electorate, piling up support among Hispanic voters, young people, and Americans without college degrees — and winning more votes in nearly all the country as he reclaimed the presidency.

Following the Republican’s populist campaign, in which he promised to shield workers from global economic competition and offered a wide range of tax-cut proposals, Trump’s increasing strength among working-class voters and nonwhite Americans helped grow his share of the vote almost everywhere.

The starkest increase may have been the 14-percentage-point swing in Trump’s share of Hispanic voters, according to an exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Some 46% of self-identified Hispanic voters picked Trump, up from 32% in the 2020 election when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Hispanics have largely favored Democrats for decades, but Trump’s share this year was the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in exit polls going back to the 1970s, and just higher than the 44% share won by Republican George W. Bush in 2004, according to data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

In counties where more than 20% of voting-age Americans were Hispanic, Trump’s margin over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris improved by 13 points relative to his 2020 performance against Biden.

“Young Hispanics do not have the same muscle memory as their grandparents who voted for Democrats for 50 years,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Republican media strategist who worked on Hispanic outreach for Trump’s 2020 campaign.

This time, Trump won 55% of Hispanic men, 19 points more than the 36% share he won four years earlier, while he garnered support from 38% of Hispanic women, up 8 points from 2020.

Trump has made opposition to immigration a cornerstone of his political career, pledging to conduct mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally. Many Hispanic voters supported Trump’s hardline positions, according to the Edison Research exit poll. About a quarter of Hispanic respondents said most immigrants in the country without documentation should be deported to the countries they came from, compared with 40% of voters overall in the poll.

Hispanic Americans skew more working-class than the country’s white majority, with larger shares of Hispanics lacking college degrees, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Hispanics also tend to be younger than average in America, which means many have had less time to build wealth and have also been more exposed to the economic troubles of recent years, including high inflation and soaring interest rates for mortgages. Trump won 43% of voters aged 18 to 29 – 7 points more than in 2020.