The new swing vote: Why more Latino voters are joining the GOP
Bible study has ended at Rep. Mayra Flores’ campaign headquarters, and volunteers are passing around steaming plates of chicken tamales. One staffer excitedly announces an all-female “Block Walk,” where participants will wear red high heels during an upcoming door-knocking effort.
“We all used to be Democrats,” says Minerva Simpson, vice president of Cameron County Republican Women, whose Facebook group ballooned to almost 800 members over the past two years. Mary David, who voted for a Republican for president for the first time in 2016, nods in agreement.
“My dad, my grandmother, everyone I knew was a Democrat. It was passed down,” says Ms. David. She and Ms. Simpson chuckle, remembering the same John F. Kennedy wall rug that hung in their childhood homes.
These women sitting in a Texas strip mall near the Mexico border are at the forefront of a potentially tectonic political shift. For decades, Latino voters in the United States have been overwhelmingly Democratic, drawn to the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson and its reputation of fighting for workers and marginalized groups. But recently, that partisan alliance has been showing unmistakable cracks.
In 2016, Donald Trump won 29% of all Hispanic voters – 2 points higher than Mitt Romney had done in 2012, according to exit polling by Edison Research. Then in 2020, Mr. Trump improved on his own performance, winning 32% of Hispanic voters.
Republicans have hit high-water marks with the Latino electorate before: In 1984 Ronald Reagan won 37%, and in 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush won 35% and 40% respectively. “Trump’s performance isn’t out of line with what we’ve seen historically,” says Mark Hugo Lopez at Pew Research. The big question is whether the Republican Party can keep, or continue to grow, Mr. Trump’s margins over the next few election cycles.
Many of these new Latino Republicans say their conversion is for good. Yes, it was former President Trump who brought them into the GOP – in part because he made them start paying attention to politics.
