Mixed-status Latino families emerged as a decisive reason why Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, fueling a development that shocked pollsters, pundits, and nearly half of the record voting-age American population.
Latinos voted in record numbers to protect family members threatened by Trump’s promises of deportation if he returned to the White House in January 2025, Juan Proano, CEO of LULAC, League of United Latin American Citizens,told NABJ Black News and Views.
There are five million Latinx households comprised of 16 million people, she said. They are a blend of native citizens, and undocumented immigrant kin.
The threat of deportation could be reality in two months. An essential voting block decided.
“No, the numbers were not a surprise to us,” Proano explained. “This is a number we talked about quite a bit with the [Kamala] Harris campaign.
“But this is not a critique [but still, apparently a surprise to cable and network TV anchors, Beltway pundits, and pollsters.]
“The Hispanic vote is a critical part of any winning coalition, going back to George W. Bush [Republican and 43rd president] who got 44 percent of Latino votes. Trump got 45 percent this week and bested Bush.”
Fifty five percent of Hispanic men voted for Trump based on exit polling, CBS News reported on Nov. 6. It was up from 36 percent support in 2020, when Trump lost to Joe Biden.
“Hispanics responded to the populist Trump message, the economy and immigration,” Proano said. “Harris promoted women and reproductive rights and had a tougher time addressing immigration.
“No party can take Latinos for granted,” she said. “The Latino majority still voted for Harris. She just didn’t get enough.”
”Defectors” author Paola Ramos agreed with Proano’s analysis.
“They [Latinos] will try to defect,” Ramos said on MSNBC, as the cable news channel crawl read “Mixed-status immigrant families express fear over Trump win.”
Ramos continued, “Trump will decide who is American enough. Who looks undocumented.”
She added, “Trump was able to tap into moral panic.”
Mixed-status Latino families, 46 percent in 2024, were up from 32 percent in 2020 when Trump was defeated by Joe Biden and became the 46th U.S. president, according to NBC exit polling.
Did Black, and Latino men have a substantial role in denying Kamala Harris a historic U.S. presidency and instead return the White House to Donald Trump?
Black male support for Trump earlier this month was 12 percent, according to data cited by the “Morning Joe” MSNBC crew, which was the same percentage Trump received during his failed 2020 re-election attempt. such repeated Black support four years ago raised eyebrows — and alarms — this week.
Overall, Black women and men gave 81% of their support to Kamala Harris, but the volume eroded compared to better support given to Democrats Joe Biden in 2020, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Pre-Election Day suggestions that Black male support for Harris was soft or eroded was “a distraction,” commented BNV’s Peter Williams from the Tuesday night Harris watch party at Howard University, the candidate’s alma mater.
Meanwhile, Reginald Jackson, 47, a Black Detroit auto worker, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that he voted for Harris because his mother told him she would do a better job of protecting her Social Security benefits.
However, Tonja Ellis, 59, a Black stay-at-home grandmother, also from Detroit, told the WSJ she voted for Trump, and cited the cost of food: “There used to be 15, 16 wings in the bag; now there’s nine. Put the food back in the bag!”
In the end, Trump beat Harris 51 percent to 48 percent.
Trump won the popular vote this time, unlike when he lost the popular vote in 2016 to Clinton and in 2020 to Biden. On Nov. 5, Trump won by five million votes out of about 138 million cast. He has made history — mostly dubious — in multiple ways as the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1888 to have been defeated after one term, only to be elected four years later.
Furthermore, noted the Washington Post’s Dan Balz on Nov. 6, Trump is a unique president-elect who was twice impeached and acquitted while in office, convicted on 34 counts in a New York State case for falsifying business records, held liable for sexual assault, and indicted by the Justice Department for attempting to subvert the 2020 election results, a case that is still pending.
Seventy six percent of Latinos are U.S. citizens, Proano said. Asked if many Latinos pulled levers out of fear and jumped on the Trump bandwagon, the query was called “a nuanced question.”
He countered, “Will Trump follow through on mass deportation? Latinos are directly impacted.”
Fifty five percent of all Latinos are packed in California, Texas and Florida, Proano said, adding, “There’s a lot for us to consider in the future. We are a civil rights organization.”
