WASHINGTON (AP) — Brian Leija, a 31-year-old businessman from Belton, Texas, wasn’t surprised that a growing number of Latino men of his generation voted for Donald Trump for president this year. Leija had voted Republican in 2016 and 2020.
Leija’s reason was simple: He explained that he had benefited from Trump’s economic policies, especially the tax cuts.
“I am a working class worker,” said Leija. “So small business tax cuts are ideal for what I do.”
For DaSean Gallishaw, a consultant in Fairfax, Virginia, the vote for Trump was because, in his opinion, the Democrats’ rhetoric did not match their actions. “It’s been a long time since Democrats have really delivered on their promises about what they’re going to do for minority communities,” he noted.
Gallishaw, 25, who is black, has also voted for Trump on two previous occasions. This year, he said, he thought the former president’s “outreach to the minority community really came through.”
Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and most notably among men under 45, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of more than 120,000 voters.
Even when Democrat Kamala Harris won majorities of black and Latino voters, it was not enough to give the vice president the White House, due to Trump’s gains.
The economy and employment made men under 45 more likely to Trump
Voters generally cited the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the country. This was also true for black and Hispanic voters.
About 3 in 10 Black men under age 45 went for Trump, about double the share in 2020. Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, were also more likely toward Trump than in 2020. About half of Young Latino men voted for Harris, compared to about 6 in 10 who opted for Biden.
Juan Proaño, general director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the largest and oldest organization in the United States that advocates for improving the conditions of Hispanics and Latinos—said that the election results make clear that Trump’s message on the economy resonated with Latinos.
“I think it’s important to say that Latinos had a significant impact on deciding who was going to be the next president and re-electing Donald Trump,” Proaño observed. “(Latino) men certainly responded to the president’s populist message and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support for immigration reform.”
The Rev. Derrick Harkins, a minister who has served at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, has overseen outreach to African-American religious communities for more than a decade. He noted that Trump’s hyper-masculine appeal worked to win over some young, non-white men.
“I think Trump with this false machismo has been effective among young men, black, white, Hispanic,” Harkins said. “And I think, unfortunately, even if it’s a very small percentage, when you’re talking about an election like the one we just had, it can be very impactful.”
Black and Latino voters’ priorities have changed since 2020
While about 4 in 10 young voters under age 45 across all racial and ethnic groups cited the economy as the top issue facing the country, older white and Latino voters were more likely to also cite immigration , with about a quarter of each saying it was the main problem.
A clear majority of young black voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” compared with about half of older black voters. Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy is in bad shape.
That conviction made it harder for Harris to highlight the real numbers in the economy, which show that inflation has dropped sharply, unemployment remains low and wages have risen. These voters simply didn’t feel that progress.
This was the first time Alexis Uscanga, a 20-year-old college student from Brownville, Texas, voted in a presidential election. The economy and immigration are the issues that led him to vote for Trump, he said.
“Everything has just become a lot more expensive than it used to be for me,” Uscanga said. “Gas, food, even as a college student, everything has gone up in price and that is a big concern for me and other issues like immigration.”
Having grown up selling tamales and used cars, and washing cars, Uscanga knows how difficult it can be to make a living. When Trump was president, he indicated, he didn’t feel that way.
“During the Trump presidency there were more opportunities,” Uscanga said. “I didn’t really like President Trump because of his speech in 2016, but I put that aside and how we lived in 2018, 2019, I just felt like we lived a good life no matter what the media said and that’s why I started supporting him after that.” .
Although the swing of votes toward Trump by black and Latino men was shocking, Trump could not have won without the support of the majority of white voters.
“Men of color are really starting to emerge as the new swing voters,” said Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a polling and research firm that conducted studies for the Harris campaign.
“For a long time we were talking about middle class women and mothers who live in the suburbs who can influence the outcome of the elections. Now men of color are really starting to emerge as that, especially young men of color, who are less ideological, less tied to one party and more likely to swing between parties or move in and out of the electorate,” Woodbury explained.
Desire for strong leadership made Trump more attractive
A majority of voters nationally said Trump was a strong leader, slightly less than half said the same about Harris. Among Hispanic voters, even more saw Trump as a strong leader in this election. About 6 in 10 Hispanic men described Trump as a strong leader, up from 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%.
Black men and women were about twice as likely as in 2020 to describe Trump as a strong leader.
David Means, a purchasing manager in Atlanta who is Black, abstained from voting in the election because he didn’t feel that either Harris or Trump were properly appealing to Black men. But the election results did not disappoint him.
“I am satisfied with the result. I don’t feel belittled. They didn’t disappoint me. “I wasn’t supporting Trump or Kamala, but I didn’t want a woman in that position,” she said. And if it had to be a woman, Means said, “I’d rather have a really strong, smart woman, for example, like Judge Judy.”
___
Figueroa reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela in New York, Sharon Johnson in Atlanta and Darren Sands contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its coverage of elections and democracy. More on AP’s democracy coverage here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
___
This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
