Trump’s Hispanic Bump

There’s no political question as consistently in vogue among a certain class of conservative intellectuals as “Why aren’t Hispanics more conservative?” The perennial springs up every election cycle.

In 2012, after the painful defeat of Mitt Romney, the accepted wisdom was that Hispanics needed to be pursued through moderation on immigration. “If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States, they will not pay attention to our next sentence,” stated the post-election “autopsy” produced by the Republican National Committee in 2013.

But the swing among Hispanic Americans toward Trump in 2020 was unexpected by most, and has therefore been dissected especially vigorously. The regnant wisdom today, to the extent there is one, is that Trump turbocharged the GOP’s turn to becoming a multiethnic workers party. In this telling, Trump bled white suburbanites, but his gains among ethnic minorities suggested the GOP had done something right, perhaps a more muscular fight against traditional elites.

It’s a compelling narrative that contains some truth. The trend toward the GOP in 2020, a surprise for those who thought Trump was a political toxin, suggests we have lessons to learn.

But those lessons are complicated, and the nature of Hispanic voting patterns in the 2020 election means that national-level explanations for the swing may be insufficient.