Gains among Latinos helped Trump push New Jersey to the right
Former President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign rally on the beach in Wildwood, Saturday, May 11, 2024. (Tim Hawk for New Jersey Monitor)
Donald Trump campaigned on deporting all undocumented immigrants , ending birthright citizenship , and revoking legal status for some immigrants who have been here for years.
Yet, Latino support for Trump across the country appears to have helped propel him to a second term in the White House. And while Vice President Kamala Harris won New Jersey, a drop in support for her presidential bid made the margin between Harris and Trump closer than expected.
Votes are still being tabulated, but across New Jersey, voters in majority Hispanic districts swung to the right this election, sometimes dramatically compared to Trump's first White House bid in 2016.
Trump appears to have won 10 voting districts in North Bergen — where 70% of the population is Latino — and a handful more in other Hudson County towns with large Hispanic populations like Union City, West New York, and Guttenberg. In the city of Passaic, which is 73% Latino, Trump defeated Harris by six points.
It doesn't all come down to Latino voters, but politicians and activists say it's no surprise some of that electorate swung to a party with messaging aimed at their priorities when they felt abandoned by Democrats, a pattern they say began emerging since 2016.
"There's a disconnect — they're not getting any messaging from Democrats that appeal to them. They don't get opportunities to run. They don't get their candidates. They don't get attention. Therefore, once they hear a message of economic opportunity and investments and business growth, they appeal to that," said Patricia Campos-Medina, president of Latinas United for Political Empowerment Action.
Campos-Medina ran for the Democratic nomination for Senate this year and lost to Andy Kim, who won the seat Tuesday
Latinos aren't a monolith and don't just want to hear about immigration, she said, and they tend to be more traditional, religious, working class, and fiscally conservative. While campaigning on the streets of Hudson County, voters griped to her about the high cost of living and financial insecurity, she said.
New Jersey is home to nearly 2 million Latinos from all over Latin America — Dominican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, and Cubans make up some of the biggest Latino demographics in the state.
Crucial support for Democrats is slipping over the assumption that all Latinos are going to vote for them, Campos-Medina added. Even in majority Hispanic towns like Elizabeth and Perth Amboy that voted for Harris, support dropped by double-digit margins.
That support will keep dwindling unless the Democratic Party makes serious investments into local grassroots organizing, education, and engaging Latinos in the political system, Campos-Medina said.
"The Democratic Party in Hudson County and Passaic County has gotten used to winning with the same folks (they) always win," she said. "They're not engaging new voters and younger voters, so they're disfranchised from the local party. And that's why we see what we see."
Nationwide, Trump won the support of about 46% of Latino voters, winning the largest share of the national Latino vote by a Republican in modern times, according to an Edison Research exit poll. That was fueled by Latino men — 55% say they voted for him while for Latinas, support for Trump was at 38%.
Dan Cassino is a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University and director of the FDU Poll. There is a realignment happening in American politics, he said, noting that in the past, the biggest divide was race and now the biggest divide is education.
He attributed Trump's popularity among Latinos to the economy, saying they tend to struggle financially because of discrimination and lower levels of education. He also noted that Latinos tend to have more traditional views on gender, and all of this may have appealed more to male voters.
"So when you put that together, these are men who feel the weight of expectations about what men are supposed to do, and then they're not able to do it. There are structural barriers preventing them from doing it. And that's a real problem. What do you do about that?" Cassino said. "Former President Trump has offered some kind of solution. Now, is he going to follow through with the solution? Is it going to work? Well, it didn't last time, but he's at least recognizing, 'Yeah, this is a problem. I'm going to fix it.' And that's powerful."
The shock of the shift in parts of Hudson County caught the eye of MSNBC analyst Steve Kornacki, who noted on election night that Hudson is "one of those giant core Democratic counties the Democratic Party relies on."
Harris still easily won Hudson overall, winning 62% to Trump's 34%. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 74% of Hudson County to Trump's 22%.
Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Morris), who is Latino, said he expected the electorate to move to Trump, just like voters in almost every other demographic appear to have. Every American is paying attention to the cost of energy, groceries, and housing, regardless of their background, he said.
"We're all suffering the same ill, and that ill was inflation," he said.
Wednesday, Gov. Phil Murphy reflected on the Democratic Party's loss of support among Latino voters, saying if the party had been taking the Latino community for granted, "shame on us."
"And we've got to figure out ... is there something substantive that we need to change, either as a party or, in my case, as an administration, versus how we communicate with the community. My gut tells me it's probably a little of each," he said.
Congressman Rob Menendez (D-08) said Democrats have to do a "deep dive" on how they engage with the Latino community, agreeing that it shouldn't be treated like a monolith.
Different parts of the community will respond to different messaging, he said. Democrats need to find ways to have "continuous dialogue" with voters from Central and South America, he said, and show tangible results, particularly with affordability.
"If we get better at it, then I think there will be a better response to what we're offering," he said.
Democrats thought offensive comments about immigrants and the Latino community from Trump and his allies — calling Mexicans rapists, referring to Puerto Rico as garbage — would hurt him with those communities. But Amy Torres of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice said some voters think Trump's comments and his plans for undocumented immigrants won't apply to them.
There's a sentiment that some immigrant families came to the United States "the right way" — without realizing that those policies have changed and are preventing new immigrants from entering legally, she said.
"We're seeing the issue become this faceless hoard of, 'Well, that isn't us,' and that people want to pull up the ladder behind them," she said.
Torres also noted that while there may have been a shift in Latino voters toward Trump, there was a portion of the electorate that stayed home. While Trump won roughly the same number of votes in New Jersey as he did in 2020, Harris won nearly 500,000 fewer than Biden here. The Democrats' shift to the right on tough immigration messaging didn't resonate with people who appeal to progressive policies, Torres said.
"We can't ignore the number of people who stayed home, and that the nature of these sort of archetypal voters are changing," she said. "People are protecting their core interests, but not this larger community interest, and I think that speaks to a failure of party building."
Dana DiFilippo contributed.
