Donald Trump's share of Latino votes set a record for a Republican presidential candidate — and it included a strong performance with the Latinos who seemed least expected to support him.
According to national exit polls, former President and now President-elect Trump won as much as 46% of the Latino vote electorate in Tuesday's election, which he won handily over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
That’s a sharp rise from the 32% Trump took in the 2020 presidential election. And even higher than the 44% high mark set by President George Bush in 2004.
In Florida, where he took almost 60% of Latino ballots, Trump won Latino-majority Miami-Dade County — the first time a Republican presidential candidate has done that since 1988.
His win there was fueled by almost 70% support among the county's majority Cubans, according to an Florida International University poll.
Appearing on WLRN’s The South Florida Roundup on Friday, following Tuesday's presidential election, Eduardo Gamarra, a FIU political science professor and expert on the U.S. Latino vote, said most Hispanic voters are "working class" who viewed inflation and the economy as top issues.
“In large measure, I think we kind of forgot that a really large component of the American working class are Hispanics and Hispanics are not really driven by identity politics or even the civil rights discussions that Democrats tend to [focus on],” Gamarra said.
He noted that in the final months leading up to the November election, FIU polls of Latinos nationally showed that between 50% to 60% said the country was headed in the wrong direction, with most holding a negative perception of the U.S. economy.
“When you have that kind of negative perception of the direction of the economy, it's virtually impossible to achieve reelection,” said Gamarra. “When you look at the prices at the supermarket, gas pumps and the price of housing, those three issues affect Latinos perhaps more intensely than others.”
U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Miami, told CNN this week that Hispanic voters have been shifting to the right, especially in Florida, because “the message of the Republican Party is more aligned with the values of Hispanic voters than the Democratic Party.”
Giménez, whose 28th congressional district includes southwest Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys, noted that Trump won his district by 20 points, a 36-point swing since 2016 when Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 16 points. In 2020, Trump lost to President Joe Biden by five points.
What’s most surprising, however, is Trump’s apparently strong performance with Puerto Rican voters — considering that shortly before Tuesday's election, speakers at a Trump campaign rally in New York made demeaning remarks about Puerto Rico, calling it “a floating island of garbage.”
Puerto Ricans as a result were expected to punish Trump at the polls. But results suggest otherwise.
READ MORE: Pro-statehood party leads Puerto Rico governor race — but pro-independence party has historic run
In Pennsylvania, which has one of the nation's largest Puerto Rican communities, Trump did almost as well with Latinos as he did nationwide — and held Harris' share of Latino votes there to 57%, a 21-point drop from President Biden's Latino support in that state in the 2020 election.
And in the I-4 Corridor of central Florida, home to one of the nation's largest Puerto Rican populations, Trump won Osceola County, which has the state’s highest concentration of Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Rican community leaders tell WLRN one reason may be that Puerto Ricans living here in the U.S. mainland hold a negative view of the chronic government corruption and dysfunction back on the U.S. island territory.
"They look back at the island and they see officials stealing right and left, power outages all the time," one Florida Puerto Rican activist, who asked to remain anonymous, told WLRN.
"It could be that the 'garbage joke' at Trump's event in New York didn't upset many of them as much as you might think."
The "garbage" insult at the Trump rally, in fact, motivated many voters on the island this week to support the pro-independence party in their governor's election.
Before the Trump rally, the incumbent pro-statehood party was leading in the polls by some 20 points. But with almost all the votes counted there, it appears it will defeat the pro-independence candidate by only about 6 points.
Jenniffer González, of the island's New Progressive Party was leading polls in the gubernatorial election, according to Puerto Rico’s State Elections Commission. González, who is Puerto Rico's non-voting representative in Congress and a political ally of Trump — had 39%, or 438,183 votes, with 91% of precincts reporting. She's a longtime Republican and Trump supporter.
Juan Dalmau, who ran for Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and Citizen Victory Movement, obtained 33% or 364,145 of votes.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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