False promises and political neglect: Why Latinos did not vote for Kamala Harris

Since it became known that Donald Trump won the election with historic support from Latino voters, social media has been flooded with Democrats blaming Hispanics for the Republican’s win. Comments such as “I hope they deport them all,” “They’re stupid,” and “Maybe Trump was right: Latinos are trash” are some of the insults that have been posted against the Latino and immigrant community. These reactions overlook what the Democratic Party should truly be questioning: why did this voting bloc turn its back on them? It is a complex question to address, but the explanation lies in the fact that a growing number of Latinos no longer feel represented by the Democratic Party and are fed up with the unfulfilled promises of past Democratic administrations.

The reality is that Latino support for Democrats has been declining since 2012. In that election, 71% of Hispanic voters backed Barack Obama. Four years later, Hillary Clinton secured 66% of the vote, and in 2020, Joe Biden’s share dropped to 65%. The downward trend has been even steeper with Kamala Harris, who garnered only 53% support. Meanwhile, Trump almost managed to close the gap with the Democrats, winning 45% of the Latino vote — a 13-point increase from his previous campaign.

The disenchantment among Hispanics has grown as they’ve felt the Democrats have overlooked them outside of election seasons and failed to address the issues that matter most to them. Although Harris’ team launched an extensive, multimillion-dollar strategy to engage Latinos — a group of over 36 million eligible voters — through Spanish-language ads and even a dedicated WhatsApp group, it was of little use. The damage was done, and Trump knew how to capitalize on that discontent.

It all came down to the economy. For Latinos — as for the rest of the country — the high cost of living, housing and food was the factor that most influenced their vote. Polls predicted this before the election: the vast majority of Latino voters were confident that Trump would handle economic issues better than Kamala Harris. And exit polls confirmed it. “Latinos were telling us that the direction of the country was horrible. The numbers were there,” political scientist Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on Latino voting patterns, told NBC News. Gamarra noted that while the U.S. has the best economy in the world based on figures, “people don’t consume those figures. People go to the supermarket. They go to the gas pump. They’re trying to buy a home. And if any group has been affected by the economy, it has been Hispanics.”

So it was of no use that Harris recognized the economy as the main concern of Latinos and presented an economic program aimed at helping them, which promised support for financing homes and businesses. The relationship between the community and the Democratic Party had already been strained after a series of campaigns where candidates made grand promises to win Latino votes, only for little to materialize after the election.

Although the Hispanic poverty rate has declined in recent years, Latino communities remain among the poorest in the nation. Ten of the nation’s communities with the highest proportion of Latino residents have a poverty rate that is 50% higher than the national average, according to a recent analysis by the consulting firm Axios. And more than half of Latinos are worried about how they will pay next month’s rent or mortgage.

“Nothing’s changed in terms of what the Latino electorate wants,” Matt Tuerk, the first Latino mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, one of the key states Harris lost to Trump, told Politico. “They still want opportunity. What they’re saying with their vote, if the exit polls are to be believed, is they don’t believe that the plans that were offered by Vice President Harris would give them that opportunity.”

Another failure: immigration

It is a fact that the United States has shifted to the right on immigration issues, a trend that is also seen in the Latino community. But this stance does not represent the view of the majority (yet). The top concern of the Latino community regarding immigration continues to be the establishment of legal pathways to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children. However, Harris — aware of the shift to the right — focused her campaign on the importance of border security above all else. In key moments, such as an interview with Telemundo aimed at engaging Latino voters, she even declined to denounce Trump’s proposed plan to expel 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Harris’ campaign strategy reflects a trend within the Democratic Party that dates back to the 1990s, spanning from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden. This trend has moved away from what many in the Latino community are asking for — legal status for themselves and their loved ones and protection from deportation — and toward a more conservative, hard-line approach that prioritizes border security and enforcement.

Biden, as a candidate, pledged to create a pathway to citizenship for the same 11 million immigrants that Trump has vowed to deport. Four years later, not only did Biden fail to fulfill this promise, but he also enacted a series of restrictive immigration policies, including curtailing the right to seek asylum at the border, partially closing it, and declining to renew humanitarian parole for half a million Venezuelan, Haitian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan immigrants who had been legally residing in the U.S. for two years thanks to the federal program.

Even before Biden, his predecessor, Barack Obama (2008–2016) deported more than five million immigrants, earning the title “deporter-in-chief” for overseeing the highest number of deportations by any U.S. president. Prior to him, Bill Clinton (1993–2001) passed a series of laws that expanded the grounds for deportation and simplified removal proceedings, laying the foundation for the current mass deportation system.

This is the Democratic legacy Harris embraced as her own during her campaign. She sought to appeal to a segment of the Latino electorate that favors stricter border policies similar to those promoted by Trump. But again, it was not enough. That segment of voters had already been swayed by Trump, despite his xenophobic and racist rhetoric. Surveys indicate that while the president-elect insults Latino immigrants — calling them “criminals” or accusing them of “poisoning the blood of our country” — Hispanics with U.S. citizenship tend not to be deterred by them.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition