Record voter gains among Latinos for Trump mainly boiled down to their top issue — the economy

Latino voters took a big right turn in an election dominated by voter outrage over the high cost of food and housing, helping Donald Trump secure a second term in the White House.

Vice President Kamala Harris finished with a slim majority of support from Hispanic voters, at 53%, while Trump vacuumed up about 45% of the vote, a 13-point increase from 2020 and a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, according to NBC News exit polls.

Trump's Hispanic vote percentage beat the previous record, set by George W. Bush's in 2004, when Bush won as much as 44% of the Hispanic vote . But in 2012, the vote swung heavily left, with 71% of Hispanics voting for President Barack Obama, followed by lower but still significant support for Hilary Clinton in 2016, at about 66%, and then joe Biden in 2020, at 65%.

Harris underperformed Biden with Hispanic voters in every battleground state, with the exception of Wisconsin, according to NBC News exit polls. Her worst showings were in Michigan, where her 35% share dropped from Biden's 59%, and in Pennsylvania, where her share of 57% was well below Biden's 78%. She also underperformed Biden in Texas and Florida by double digits.

From the beginning of the election to its final days, Latino voters in interviews and polls consistently named the economy, inflation or higher costs as their No. 1 issue and gave Trump the advantage on them.

Pennsylvania voter Regino Cruz, 25, said Tuesday that he voted for Trump, believing the former president could improve the economy.

"For me, it's work. It's the economy. It's groceries," said Cruz, who's of Puerto Rican descent and was waiting to vote at the John B. Stetson Middle School in Northern Philadelphia.

Cruz said he wasn't fazed by recent comments a comedian made at a Trump rally call ing Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage , and added he didn't trust that Harris "can fix the economy."

While inflation hit a 9.1% pandemic-era peak in 2022, in September it had hit its lowest level since February 2021.

'The numbers were there' In a September NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll , 34% of Latinos ranked the cost of living as the most important issue, followed by jobs and the economy at 20%. In that poll, the preference was Harris 54%, Trump 40%.

Trump's gains among Latino voters included historic wins in places such as Starr County, Texas — a border county that had voted Democratic for 100 years – and in Miami-Dade, Florida, which went red for the first time in more than 30 years.

Trump's showing also boosted outcomes for Latino Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas won Latino voters by 6 points, compared with 2018 when he lost Hispanic voters by 29 points, according to NBC News exit polls.

In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, 4 in 10 Latino voters supported Trump, up from 3 in 10 in 2020.

"Latinos were telling us that the direction of the country was horrible. The numbers were there," said Florida International University political scientist Eduardo Gamarra. "The approval for the president was also down in the dumps. The approval for Harris was higher, but there was still an overwhelming sense that the country was going in the wrong direction. And the economy was the No. 1 issue, by far."

Gamarra said the U.S. has the best economy in the world based on figures, "but what we don't realize is that 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."

Under the Biden administration, Latinos made gains in health care coverage and homeownership and on labor participation and unemployment, they fared pretty equally compared to under Trump.

But Latino voter dissatisfaction persisted despite better economic markers as the election progressed.

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democrat-leaning polling and research company, said Latino voters who backed Trump liked his prioritization of the economy.

"That was the message they got about Trump coming out of the pandemic, that this guy is going to prioritize the economy better than everyone else," Odio said. "They even told us in focus groups they didn't believe Trump was going to do any of the other stuff, whether it was banning abortion, repealing Obamacare or deporting Dreamers. They viewed that as political propaganda and ultimately viewed him as a businessman who was going to put the money first," Odio said.

Odio warned against pinning the election outcome on the Democratic drop in Latino support. Trump had "eye-popping gains" among Latinos in "places like New York and New Jersey and Texas and Florida," he said. But Trump's victory came down to a broader erosion of support from voters.

"There's a temptation to look at campaign tactics, but when you have a broad erosion, you have to zoom out and look at the crises of migration and inflation," Odio said. "The twin crises of economy and migration have doomed incumbents across the world."

A rightward shift on immigration — and a gender divide Latino voters, like other voter groups, shifted right on immigration, backing tougher enforcement against large groups of people arriving at the border that have strained resources in communities that have attempted to shelter them. In the September NBC News poll, 35% of Latinos polled said that immigration hurts more than it helps, the highest share of Latino voters to say so in about 20 years of surveys.

Trump pledged to launch the largest deportation in American history on Day One of his administration. He has said he would use resources across federal agencies, including the National Guard to round up people in the county illegally.

Artemio Muniz, chairman of the Federation of Hispanic Republicans, sai d he was pleased with the election outcome, but his elation was tempered because "the reality is there's work to do."

"Now my focus is to the immigration side. Now we have a real battle on our hands, not with Trump," Muniz said, but "we have to make sure ... hard-working Mexican immigrants do not get deported."

Kalman Nunez, a 40-year-old barber in Milwaukee, said the election came down to jobs and immigration. Too many immigrants are crossing the border and taking jobs away people here, he said.

"Immigration is out of control," he said. "Trump is going to put an end to that."

Hispanic men were key in propelling Trump to victory and a historic Latino vote share.

Nationally, NBC News exit polls estimate that 54% of Latino men voted for Trump, while 44% supported Harris.

Fernando Rivera, director of the Puerto Rico Research Hub at University of Central Florida, said that based on his research and focus groups, the economic message was particularly appealing to young men. "At the end of the day, Trump made a better argument," he said. "And people bought that argument more than they bought the argument from Harris."

While Trump often campaigned on banning abortion and border control, none of that mattered. "I care about one thing, and that's the money in my pocket," said Danny Martinez, 18, a first-time voter who considered himself a Democrat but voted for Trump.

But among Latinas, 61% voted for Harris, and a much lower share (37%) supported Trump.

In Philadelphia, Yahaira Rodríguez, 33, said she was voting for Harris on Tuesday, because "I'm all about morality, and Trump doesn't stand for anything that I stand for."

Christianea Valentine, a 33-year-old mother of three, said her most important issue in voting for Harris was "women's rights, especially as I'm a woman and I have a daughter, that was a big thing for me."

In the NBC News September poll, 4% of Latino voters named abortion as their most important issue, which Harris made central to her campaign.

Ultimately, the Trump campaign's promise of better economic times and tougher border policies resonated most among one of the nation's fastest-growing voter groups.

"Our movement is bigger, stronger, and more diverse than ever — with real, working-class Americans, including Hispanics," said Vianca Rodriguez, Trump campaign deputy director of Hispanic communications.