Recent polls suggest that former President and presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump could secure the biggest share of Latino votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in history (including himself).
During the current election cycle, Trump has seen an improvement in polling among Latino voters. An often cited A New York Times/Siena College poll found that Biden had only a 1% lead over Trump among this demographic, with 47% and 46% respectively.
As Newsweek reports, if those numbers were to be similar come election day, Trump would surpass Richard Nixon's as the Republican with the biggest share of Latino votes in history. Nixon received 40 percent of the Latino vote in 1972, just 7 years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act granted suffrage rights to Hispanic voters and other ethnic minorities.
In subsequent elections, percentages varied: 18% for Gerald Ford in 1976, 35% for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and 37% in 1984. George H.W. Bush secured 30% in 1988, which decreased to 25%in 1992.
In later years, Bob Dole (1996) received 21%, George W. Bush secured 35% in 2020 and 40% in 2004, while John McCain (2009) and Mitt Romney (2012) got 31% and 27% respectively.
Trump himself started out with a subpar performance with Latinos during his first campaign with only 28% of the vote in 2016. However, his numbers with the demographic grew in 2020 to 32%, while Biden, the incumbent president, won 65% of that share.
If the polling data holds true, Trump could not only surpass his previous performance but set a new bar for Republicans. Trump's efforts to court Hispanic voters include establishing the "Latino Americans for Trump" coalition, featuring elected officials like Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The coalition is meant to appeal to Hispanic voters on matters such as crime and inflation.
According to Pew Research Center data, approximately 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential election—an increase of nearly 4 million from 2020. Latinos are projected to account for 14.7 percent of all eligible voters this year, up from 13.6 percent in the previous election.
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