Behind the Latino Assimilation Paradox 

By now, there should be no doubt that Latinos have been moving toward the GOP in the Donald Trump era. We have seen clear shifts across the past five election cycles, but this was often denied, ignored, misunderstood, or explained away by liberal activists and academics who needed and wanted Latino voters to be loyal Democrats and ideological progressives.

These changes also took some conservatives by surprise, as false narratives circulated for years about Latinos as socialists, welfare seekers, and unassimilating immigrants. Ronald Reagan may have predicted that “Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it yet,” but not many Republicans seemed to believe it. While “Hispanics weren’t what progressives thought,” neither were they what most conservatives thought.

However, my work since the 2016 election has documented the relatively high and growing Latino support for Trump as well as for GOP congressional candidates. In a series of articles (here, here, and here) and essays (here and here) with Álvaro Corral, we show the erosion of Latino voters from the Democratic coalition and discuss what this means for both parties.

The Latino assimilation paradox

The big picture reason for this electoral shift is that Latinos are, contrary to rumor, assimilating in the classic American manner. While some conservatives have claimed that “Latinos don’t assimilate,” the evidence is clear that Latinos (and immigrants generally) are moving to the mainstream across social, economic, and cultural indicators, and have been for years.

This leads to what I call the Latino assimilation paradox—the assimilation disbelieved by some Republicans is not only real but also helping their party at the expense of the Democrats.

Democrats may find this ironic, but they have engaged in their own fictions about “Latinx” populations. As Álvaro Corral and I have argued, Democrats mistook a “New Deal” electorate for ideologically progressive voters. They needed Latinos to be a key coalition partner, and they convinced themselves that the predominant Latino support for Democrats was also an endorsement of coastal-style liberalism.

We also argue that this Latino transition toward the GOP is unlikely to reverse because it is based on changes that originate from within the population. The Latino vote is associated with key demographic factors that reflect an assimilating population, such as generational status and religion. The Latino vote also reflects wider dynamics and concerns among the general public, such as the gender gap, class, and immigration attitudes, which further indicate a movement toward the political mainstream. 

Exit-poll evidence

Exit polls may not be the last word in understanding group voting patterns, but they do provide a rare set of consistent data points over time. They are also immediately available after an election and therefore key to shaping how the results are understood. While academics are currently awaiting the release of scholarly surveys, which will allow more detailed insights about the direction and determinants of racial- and ethnic-group voting, the political world will have long moved on from the election by then.

These exit-poll data can be supplemented by county-level returns, which are consistent with a story of Latino movement to the GOP. We see strong evidence of Trump gains in predominantly Latino areas ranging from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the congressional district of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City.

From 2016 to 2024, the National Election Pool (NEP) and AP VoteCast (which began in 2018) show clear evidence of Latino movement toward the GOP. This trend is also found in political science and other surveys, as discussed in our research linked above.

As this table indicates, the Latino vote in 2024 was well under the 2:1 ratio of support for Democrats that many saw as a baseline. Democrats have long assumed they will always be the net beneficiaries of Latino population growth, but they are unprepared for an electoral world in which this is decreasingly the case. 

Our research also finds that Latinos have shifted their voting patterns in other noteworthy ways. In 2020, Latinos increased their support for a presidential candidate who lost, which is contrary to past patterns. In 2022, Latinos increased their support for congressional Republicans in the midterm elections, which indicates a broader partisan shift. In the past, while some Republican presidents, such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, did relatively well among Latinos, that success did not transfer to subsequent Republicans running for Congress or president.

Democrats: a rocky road ahead

The main consequence for the Democrats is clear: the end of their dream that demographic change would inevitably lead to partisan and policy victories. This theory of demography as destiny assumed that the growing racial-ethnic diversification of America would lead to a multicultural political alliance that broke the long-standing partisan logjam in favor of the Democrats and progressivism. Although there have been many reasons to question this theory, it nevertheless became increasingly accepted within both parties; but while Democrats anticipated inevitable gains, Republicans worried that democracy itself would consign them to oblivion.

The failure of a rainbow coalition to realign electoral politics is having a demoralizing effect on the Democrats. Every Latino voter who switches to the GOP not only reduces the Democratic margin for error but undermines the fundamental theory of how the party will prosper over time. If the Democrats need to go back to the demographic drawing board and find new constituencies, there are few obvious options.

In 2024, rather than swinging toward Kamala Harris, Latinos helped to give Donald Trump a clear victory. The Democratic Party is in shock that so many minority voters turned away from the minority candidate, and it is not sure how to respond. The party now has the formidable task of understanding Latinos as they actually are, and not as they have wanted them to be.

Republicans: can they maintain momentum?

By contrast, Republicans should be feeling a renewed optimism about their future. Many are now realizing that a “majority minority” America may not be the electoral obstacle they anticipated. To the contrary, the GOP has a rare chance to reshape the partisan balance of power through continued gains among Latinos and other minority and immigrant voters.

Nevertheless, the party must navigate two challenges to maximize this opportunity. First, these electoral trends may be in conflict with the party’s recent rhetoric, which has been working overtime to denounce anything that involves “diversity.” To avoid leaving votes on the table, the GOP should fine-tune its rhetoric to the reality of diverse electorates that increasingly support Trump and conservatism.

Second, Republicans also need to better understand Latino communities and eschew the false narratives that have circulated for years. Latinos, whether native born or immigrant, are best understood as workers, taxpayers, churchgoers, and parents. They want to be Marines, not Marxists. They want to achieve the American dream, not undermine it. They enhance economic growth, embody the entrepreneurial spirit, check population decline, and strengthen national security. Many Latinos, especially immigrants, are socially conservative. In other words, they are ripe for further recruitment by a GOP that can understand their contributions, character, and aspirations.

Moving to the mainstream 

Partisan change is like a loose thread—once it starts running, it’s difficult to stop. 

For many years, the typical Latino voter experienced politics as a low-intensity activity, as neither party invested much in advertising or voter mobilization in areas with large Latino electorates. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seemed to care much about Latinos, but the former’s New Deal–style approach of “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” had a more direct appeal to a population with relatively low socioeconomic status. Every now and then a candidate like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush emerged and received relatively high Latino support, but the partisan effect was fleeting. 

Decades later, after they have moved across socioeconomic indicators toward the mainstream, we should not be surprised that Latinos are also moving to the political mainstream. This was also the case for the European Catholic immigrant groups of the twentieth century, who began as Democrats but switched to the GOP over time. Today, Latinos at the grass roots are increasingly responding to the political environment not as members of a minority group tied to the Democrats by tradition or yesteryear’s ideology, but as Americans making up their own minds about candidates, conditions, and issues. 

To use academic jargon, we should see Latinos as exercising their “agency” to make political choices. This means they are making up their own minds about parties and policies and are decreasingly likely to follow the progressive groups and politicians that claim to lead them. Academics tend to view agency positively, especially when exercised by minority groups, but not so much in this case.    

A changing Latino electorate was not planned or anticipated by the GOP, but as the party notices growing Latino support, it is paying more attention to outreach and mobilization. This may be creating a virtuous circle whereby more grass-roots Latino support for Republicans generates more recruitment efforts by the party, which leads to more support, and so on. 

Democrats often blame their electoral problems on “vast right-wing conspiracies” or “voter suppression” or (today’s patronizing favorite) “disinformation,” but the emerging reality is that a growing number of Latinos just prefer Trump and the GOP over what the Democratic Party is offering—as do many of their fellow Americans.

Risks for Republicans

Despite all this good news for Republicans, the GOP should not make the same mistake as the Democrats and assume that population change will inevitably work in its favor. The key dynamic is that Latinos are moving to the mainstream, and as mainstream voters, many will adjust their party support depending on the economic and political context. 

If the cost of living remains high, tariffs and trade wars harm the economy, and the GOP over-interprets its 2024 mandate, some Latino voters may reconsider their support for the party in 2026 and 2028. Furthermore, if Republicans attack “diversity” in a way that implies Latinos are not real Americans, and the new administration deports relatives and friends of Latino voters, the party may find that it has failed to grasp a transformational opportunity.