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Steve Pashivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Sarah McKammon. I cover politics. And today on the pod, we're talking about Latino voters who went for Trump. Trump won 46% of Latinos this year, the highest ever for a Republican. And Sarah, let's bring you in first because you reported out a story this week about this group and why they backed the former president. Where did you go for this story and who
did you end up talking to? Well, I wanted to hear from conservative Latinos, people who were likely to have supported Trump and really sort of hear what's on their minds. And so I went to a church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It's called First By Linguil Christian Church. The pastor there said people come from 14 different countries, some mix of Puerto Ricans. Of course, our US citizens and lots of naturalized citizens and other people who are still in
the process of hopefully becoming citizens. And so this was a church with a really wide range of experiences and backgrounds, but a very politically and theologically conservative, evangelical Latino church. We're just about everybody I talked to had supported Trump. And I heard two major things. One was what you might expect, the economy. This was an
issue we heard from so many voters all over the country covering this campaign. But as you might imagine, in a conservative evangelical church, a lot of people also talked about social and cultural issues like abortion, like transgender issues. And they said they felt like Donald Trump, whether he himself was a Christian or not, at least respected and understood their concerns more than the Democrats. So it's interesting. It's like some of it is policy,
right? Like how they're feeling about the economy. But then also just like, it sounds like they weren't particularly concerned whether or not Trump was religious himself, but it was just a reflection of they felt like they were being seen a little more than Democrats, maybe? Yeah, one of the people I met was a man in his mid 30s named Rowell Dela Cruz. He is originally from the Dominican Republic, came here as a small child, naturalized as a citizen
as a young man. And he told me something that I hear from a lot of evangelicals, of usually white evangelicals who I've done to cover a lot, which is this idea that whatever Trump's personal character, he wasn't voting for that reason. I'm not voting for a pastor. I'm not voting for a leader at a church. I'm voting for a man that respects Christian values and his understanding of how America should be according to the Constitution is based on Christian values.
You know, I think this is really interesting. Like obviously evangelicals are always going to be probably the most stalwart constituency for the Republican Party. And this shows that it cuts across even ethnic and racial lines because I also talked to a lot of Latinos obviously in red states like Florida and Texas, but also in more purple states like Pennsylvania. And Trump's character did matter. I talked to one man in Philly. He owns a grocery store.
His name is Edward Bonilla and he is Dominican. And he said that actually what Trump said about Haitian immigrants really bothered him because he's from the Dominican Republic and they're from the same islands. He took that pretty personally. But by and large, he was on the fence about either not voting at all or voting for Trump because the economy was so important. And so I think it's interesting. For the most part, a lot of Latinos I talked
to, like the economy was their number one issue. And just depending how entrenched you are in conservative politics is whether or not you turned out, which I think bears out in the sort of exit polls we've seen. Of course, like demographic data, like this is going
to get mentioned a lot. Like that's going to become clearer in the months to come. But I'm really curious to see like in the few little places where like maybe Trump's character did sort of sway some of these like let the know and sort of like less consistent voters or new voters, you know, I'm going to be curious to see what happened. I'm curious from both of you. I mean, we mentioned at the top that this was, you know, the
largest share of Latino voters that Republicans have ever won before. And you both have covered elections in the past trend wise. Like what are you seeing that's maybe changed from four years ago, eight years ago, if anything? The shift toward the Republican Party that we saw was more pronounced, I think, than anybody anticipated. I mean, if you look back at 2020 data, this shift was starting to emerge, right? But we're talking double
digit growth, which I think was not expected. It's not just because you know, I think like if you look at some down ballot races, especially in states where there are a lot of Latino voters, Democrats are holding on a little bit. We'll see if Latinos are in the mix for that. But from what I heard from a lot of Latino voters like writ large, like across the board from every sort of geographic background for maybe the exception of Puerto Ricans is that
their lack of trust and Democrats to solve their sort of material needs. And I mean, I like, there's going to be a lot of talk about like how the Democrats sort of like missed how much voters were like screaming at both parties to like solve inflation and economic,
you know, pressures that they were feeling. But when you're a Latino immigrant, especially in a Latino immigrant community, like you have to remember, like these are folks who left their countries, their families, the nation that speaks their language to come to a
place in search of economic prosperity. Like that is the promise of this country. And there is like nothing more frustrating to a group of people than to have made all these sacrifices and to show up somewhere and feel like this one thing that you were promised seems so far out of reach. So I think like across the board, like I think that is really what caused this sort of like humongous shift away from Democrats and to a, and to, you know,
a party that was promising, you know, big changes to the economy. I mean, whether that all bears out is an open question. But Donald Trump was at least taking these concerns, you got at least very seriously on that note. One of the pastors of the church who I spoke with before the service, you know, I asked about that joke at the Madison Square Garden rally, not too long before the election, where the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made that comment
describing Puerto Rico as an island of garbage. You know, the pastor said that was offensive. But he said there are bigger issues that they're dealing with. And one of those issues is the economy. Yeah. And to your point, Ashley, I mean, this isn't just people who are necessarily like just looking at themselves or their direct family members, right? Like so many of these folks are multi-generational. They're thinking about their kids' futures, their kids' education,
their kids' livelihoods, whether or not they can provide for all of that. And on top of that, Sarah, to your reporting, you know, when you, when you talk about their community values, especially when you visit a church, like the one you visited to, it seems like there were a public and party, you really spoke to them overall on both of those fronts. Right. At least to this group and at least to, you know, conservative Latinos with the
sort of religious inclination, which isn't everybody. But, you know, one of the women I spoke to at the church said, look, not all Latinos are religious, but we're a group of people that values, you know, family values. And, you know, that was her take, but that was sort of how she described the affinity that some people in her church and her larger community had for Trump and the Republican Party. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.
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And we're back and we're going to talk about immigration specifically here because there is sort of this misconception that folks in this country who have maybe immigrated to the US recently or our first or second generation Americans might be, you know, less into how someone like Donald Trump talks about immigration, how folks in the Republican Party sometimes talk about immigration. But there's a lot of nuance there and it's sometimes a little bit more complicated, right, Sarah?
So much more complicated, you know, so many folks at this church I visited and other Latino leaders I've spoken to, particularly on the on the right, we're, you know, Republican Latino leaders have said, look, Latino Americans care about the same things that a lot of other Americans care about, particularly those in kind of vote for Republicans this year. They care about safety and security and there's a sense that what's happening at the border
is unacceptable. And you know, I heard that from people I talked to, some of whom either themselves were immigrants or, you know, were close to people who had gone through the immigration process. You know, I talked to Karen Orta, she is Puerto Rican. So of course, American citizens didn't have to deal with immigration, but she knows people who have. And she said she supports Trump's policy here. Is a sad topic, but I agree to what he says that people need to come to the United States
of America the legal way. And she said, look, not everybody coming through the border is causing problems, but she feels that some people are. And, you know, she said that it's sad because a lot of people come here seeking the American dream, but there just has to be a process or has to be a limit. Another woman I spoke to who is a naturalized citizen originally
from Colombia said, this is my country now, essentially, and I want to be safe. And so those same arguments that Trump was making sort of, you know, that appeal broadly among the white electorates seem to appeal to many of the Latinos I've talked to as well.
Actually, I'm curious because the way I'm kind of thinking about this as Sarah is talking about it and from, you know, my coverage on the trail as well is that so many of these issues right talking about the border, talking about immigration is somehow used to also talk about housing is also used to talk about people's pocketbooks and how they feel about
the economy is also used to talk about criminal justice. And it kind of becomes this like base issue to fan out into all these other issues that people have a lot of concerns about. Did you see that playing out in your reporting as well? Yeah, well, I mean, I would frame it as I think immigrants were scapegoated a lot for sort of financial issues. I think JD Vance had a couple of times during the debate that, you
know, housing prices were related to an influx of migrants in the country. I think a lot of these things economists have like mixed views on like I don't think that that is completely true. The economy is hard to understand for anyone trying to figure out what is causing inflation, why your groceries are higher. Like I think everyone's sort of looking for something to blame and they want like a big fix and that I heard a lot from voters.
And so, you know, immigration was like sort of an easy case to make for folks. And the Latino vote like all other voting blocks do not vote as a monolith, which means like they don't vote as one. There is just so many factors that affect how people view politics and who they support. And that is especially true with a group of voters who come from like all different parts of the world, right? I mean, this is not just a growing electorate.
It's a relatively new part of this country and it is shifting and people are coming from various geographic backgrounds. I think it is not surprising that during this big boom in population, there is also this voting shift. It's like it's people longer, people stay somewhere the more they change. And I think like how people vote is going to be changing constantly probably. And it would be a mistake to assume that with these major demographic
shifts, these major populations shifts, that things would stay the same, right? Why would they? Yeah, exactly. You know, I talked to this Republican strategist who has written about Latino voters, focuses on Latino voters named Mike Madrid. And you know, he told me that he's a Republican, but he thinks Democrats do have an opportunity to win back some of these Latino voters if they start speaking to these issues that seem to drive
the 2024 campaign. Yeah. I mean, issues of democracy and a lot of the things that like holding a former president accountable for going against Democratic norms, that is just not something that someone who's a new citizen probably cares as much as they do, especially when they're feeling, you know, economic pressures and don't have those kind of norms in the country they came from. Like it is a hard pitch to make everyone care about that over their
material needs. And I think that's like one of the big lessons that is coming out of this election. Yeah, economy, economy number one. We just, we knew that months and months ago and it's still true today. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Chevrom. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR politics podcast.
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