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Kamala Harris bombed with Hispanic voters. That’s the whole story.

As I've mentioned, I'm a little skeptical of any theory about why there was a big turn against Democrats in 2024 because, in fact, there wasn't a big turn. There was a normal, moderate turn.

But in one place there was a huge turn: Hispanic voters. Here's the Democratic winning margin among Hispanics going back to 1980:

Even if you assume that Democrats lose the overall vote in 2024 by two points, you'd still expect them to win the Hispanic vote by 33%. Instead they won it by only 5%. That's an enormous shift both generally and compared to Joe Biden in 2020.

Now, the 2024 vote isn't completely without precedent: George Bush did extraordinarily well among Hispanics in the 2004 election. But that was explainable: Bush actively courted Hispanics and received a surge in Hispanic support after the capture of Saddam Hussein. The 2024 election remains a little more mysterious.

In any case, the Hispanic drop represents a shift of nearly 5% of the total popular vote away from Kamala Harris. That's way more than enough to account for her loss.

This doesn't automatically mean that all the other theories are wrong. It could still be inflation or wokeness or immigration. But any theory worth considering needs to account for why it affected Hispanic voters differently than others. So far none of them really do that.

84 thoughts on “Kamala Harris bombed with Hispanic voters. That’s the whole story.

  1. Justin

    Immigration activists told democrats that helping dreamers and undocumented would ingratiate them to Latino voters. I think maybe they misread the room.

    1. Justin

      And let’s be honest, neither the Catholic / Christian Latino nor the Muslim “liberals” have any use for the LGBT. They just don’t. These religious folks are never going to be happy with democrats.

    2. gibba-mang

      I kept reading, even as far back as 2000, that Hispanics did not favor amnesty or asylum for immigrants from central and south America. One of Biden's few failures was allowing Republicans to make a scene about "open borders" with no real push back. I hope the advisors of Biden that pushed that policy are gone. I favor increasing legal immigration and asylum but there needs to be some control and the perception by most Americans was that there was a free for all.

    3. Anandakos

      Irrelevant. The grandkids of the veterans of Operation Wetback of the Eisenhower era are just as racist as What Foulks. They believe that they're at least "honorary" white people, because they don't have an accent.

      In case you missed it, Kamala Harris is Black and Subcontinental Indian. Hispanics generally like neither group, for different, but equally envious reasons.

        1. zaphod

          It also appears to be an American tradition to pull up the ladder behind you after being helped to climb up it by taking advantage of government programs.

    4. bebopman

      I’m Hispanic and my only contribution is that when I was growing up in New Mexico, the Hispanics who had been there a long time, some going back to before the Americans took over, looked down hard at any recent immigrants. Not sure why. But I also saw a few recent tv interviews of Hispanic Americans who said the same thing. Not sure why they think trump will accept the difference that they seem to believe exists.

      1. iamr4man

        Somebody here made the point that what we call “Hispanic” covers a lot of ground and somebody from Mexico might not have a high opinion of someone from Central America and might be receptive to indicating them as people who have been released from prison, etc.
        I thought about that for a while and, well, I guess you could say I became “woke”. In my mind I had thought of immigrants from places like El Salvador or Venezuela as “Hispanics”. But that’s not how they think of themselves. In the same way that “Asian” is several different countries some of which have a low opinion of “Asians” from other countries.
        So it’s easier for people to think “he’s not talking about me, he’s talking about “those people” and he’s right, you can’t trust “them”.

    5. NealB

      Looking at any segment of voters (Latinos e.g.) of course misses the larger picture and can't tell the "whole story." Democrats have done a terrible job for going on 50 years with working class voters in general. Enough of those voters just gave up this time (again) and voted for Republicans. I don't think many (any?) of them believe Republicans will make a difference for them, but they're not wrong, as a class, that they've been screwed over time and again (Clinton, Obama) by Democrats anyway, so what difference does it make? See Robert Reich's latest here for the "whole story." https://youtu.be/7XnjJTNo5vk?si=rKYXUHfqW77Ru59Y Same story Bernie Sanders told over ten years ago. It's not complicated. Does the Democratic Party really want to represent the middle / working class or not? With few exceptions over the past 50 years, no.

      1. NealB

        Sanders on the same point recently: https://youtu.be/ZW5OrThp57k?si=88GTzCJR2r1qDI2N

        Actual Democrats older than 65 have seen this coming since Reagan beat Carter in 1980. And it was clear then that the fix was in: Democratic leaders and Republicans taking over were in agreement to screw over the middle class so the wealthy and corporations could reap the benefits of modernization and advanced technologies.

        1. emjayay

          Productivity increase is the basis for higher incomes/wealth since the days of Adam Smith and the industrial revolution. Incomes at all levels tended to rise in step with overall productivity increases in the economy until about 1980 when higher incomes started to go up more with mid to lower incomes not increasing much if any.

          I have a nice graph to illustrate that but it seems like charts and graphs are not allowed here at Charts and Graphs Я Us.

          This in a general way is behind a lot of stuff, but obviously the change in Hispanic voting pointed out by Kevin is a particular subset of this.

  2. S1AMER

    Well, maybe at least some of the Hispanic voters who gave Trump their votes will realize what a huge mistake they made once they start seeing how much Trump hurt them, and vote smarter in 2026 and 2028 and forever after.

    Maybe ...

      1. Camasonian

        Wrong. If they are voters they are by definition, American citizens and not subject to deportation. And they are most likely born here like anyone else since the last immigration amnesty with a path to citizenship happened during the Reagan Administration.

        The majority of Hispanic voters in this country are not, in fact, immigrants. The failure to understand this is partly why Democrats are losing Hispanic voters.

        1. memyselfandi

          You may have seen mention of operation wetback in other comments. Many of the people rounded up and deported during operation wetback were US citizens. Your naive belief that hispanic citizens are safe under Trump because they are citizens is exceptionally naive.

        2. n1cholas

          Trump calling for the end of birthright citizenship and Stephen Miller and Homan speaking about it means any and all Hispanic "citizens" are totally safe.

          Just make sure you have your papers with you at all times and everything will be fine!

          Hilarious.

        3. Austin

          Lol. Perhaps you’re not aware of Operation Wetback. Millions of people of Latino heritage were deported, including some US Citizens. Whoopsy.

          In 1955, thousands of disoriented people roamed the city’s streets as the sun bore down on them. They had just been dumped there by American immigration officials—snatched from their lives and jobs in the United States and thrown into a city where they didn’t know anyone… The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States.

          https://www.history.com/news/operation-wetback-eisenhower-1954-deportation

          Just like how thousands of US citizens of Japanese descent weren’t supposed to be incarcerated and stripped of all their property without due process either. It says so in the US Constitution! But that totally happened to them during WWII with the court’s blessing in Korematsu.

          And let’s not even get into how many times the Native Americans signed “legally binding” treaties with the US government that were tossed into the trash as soon as a president wanted them to be.

          But I’m sure this time will be different.

          The lack of history education in this country is one of many reasons why our nation is doomed to repeat its mistakes.

  3. Doctor Jay

    How long did it take the Moslem/Gaza advocates to realize that Trump had misled them? A week? Two weeks?

    Meanwhile, I expect a combination of the trans thing, and Kamala being a woman had a fairly big impact, whilst they understood the immigration threats as bluster.

    You know, just like so many people thought that abortion rights were "settled law", and just an empty talking point.

    1. aldoushickman

      "and Kamala being a woman had a fairly big impact"

      Maaaaybe. Kevin hasn't really labeled the dots, but I would expect that the Clinton-Trump election dot would be pretty close to the trendline, and Clinton of course was a woman.

  4. Citizen99

    It's not exactly the *whole* story, but it is a big part of it. If you crunch the swing-state numbers and compare them to 2020, here's what pops out.
    - White turnout was down overall, but down twice as much for Harris than for Trump -- ESPECIALLY among white women!
    - Black turnout was slightly up from 2020, but about the same for Harris as for Trump, in comparison with Biden's support.
    - Hispanic turnout was up quite a lot compared to 2020, but up twice as much for Trump as for Harris, and -- here's the kicker -- Trump's turnout among Hispanic WOMEN increase twice as much as Harris's turnout.
    - In the "Other Races" category, which is about half Asian (not sure who the other half is), Trump also gained substantial new turnout, while Harris's numbers were about the same as 2020 Biden's.

    So the bottom-line message is that the two main factors putting Trump over the top in the swing states was a *drop* in turnout for Harris among white voters and a *surge* in Trump turnout among Hispanic voters. And in both groups, *women* were more motivated to prefer Trump over Harris than men were!

    That's what Democrats need to figure out.

    My gut feeling is that the Trump campaign put a lot of money into Spanish-language (and maybe Asian-language) media, both broadcast and online while Democrats may have relied on their old-school door-knocking, phone-calling GOTV machinery. But I don't have any data to back that up. Smarter people than me need to delve into this and ignore what the pundits are saying.

    1. xmabx

      Also religious groups engage with these communities 365 days a year and have a lot more trust and pull with them than Dem activists that come knocking once every four years.

  5. iamr4man

    I have always felt that Latinos were easy pickings for Republicans if only they would do something to appeal to them. Trump proved that was unnecessary. Not only that, he proved you could call them Vermin poisoning the blood of our country and they would still vote for him.

  6. Salamander

    "Hispanic"? Isn't the only proper term "Latin Ex"?

    (sorry; I'm just being an arse. And constantly saddened by Democrats kicking themselves. That's the job of the infotainment media and Republicans!)

    1. gs

      Yeah, I've never personally heard a latino/latina use latinX. I've often wondered what they think of it. The entire structure of Spanish (and French, etc) requires masculine and feminine nouns.

  7. JRF

    Kevin, I think you're basing this on exit polls. Those are not bad. But they are also not great.

    There's some new research by the UCLA Voting Rights Project (right now they're just teasing it on social media - not published yet as far as I can tell) using precinct-by-precinct analysis, which suggests that the exit polls are overstating how badly Harris did among Latino voters.

    https://bsky.app/profile/uclavrp.bsky.social/post/3lclwa745nc2q

    They are finding that the change from 2020 to 2024 was about a 5-7 point drop in Latino support for Harris (i.e. she still won over 60% of the Latino vote).

      1. JRF

        5-7% is definitely a big drop! But it's not as big as the exit-poll-driven narrative that this is the central reason the Harris campaign lost.

        There are a lot of reasons the election turned out how it did. We need to get the magnitudes right if we're going to understand what happened.

    1. Jonathan H-E

      Exit polls are definitely unreliable, but just those charts don't really match up with what they are claiming. They tweet talks about the "Latino vote," but the charts are referring to precinct data and even the heavily Latino precincts are not that close to 100% Latino. The paper presumably goes into more detail about how they deal with that issue.

      They also seem to have chosen to not feature charts from areas with large Cuban populations (Hudson County, NJ; Florida) that swung massively towards the Republicans. Hence it seems like they are trying to push a narrative via this release.

    2. Joseph Harbin

      I had questions seeing a 5% margin for Harris. If she got more than 60% of the Latino vote, that's way different. This AP analysis had a 14% margin (56% to 42%). These number are all over the place. How reliable is any of it?

      At my link, you can also see trends since 1984 based on CNN polling. The two best years for Democratic share were 1996 (72%) and 2012 (71%), both years that D incumbents were running. The two best years for Republican share were 1984 (37%) and 2004 (40%), both years that R incumbents were running.

      What does that imply? Maybe one reason that Dems have seen slippage since 2012 is that we haven't had a D incumbent running since then. Voters, especially hard-to-reach voters like Latinos, tend to support the biggest "name." Trump has been that for at least a couple of cycles.

      Is there a cultural factor at play? Would a man (or a wannabe "strongman") have an advantage over a woman? Perhaps. You also have a more limited Spanish-speaking media landscape, and Univision, with new ownership that's drawn criticism for its ties to, and coverage of, the Trump-Kushner family, may also be a factor. Also: only 23% of Latinos have a college degree (vs. 47% for whites).

      Using data from CNN (link above) and Pew, here's the Democratic margin in Latino voting during presidential cycles:

      1980 21%
      1984 24%
      1988 39%
      1992 36%
      1996 51%
      2000 27%
      2004 18%
      2008 36%
      2012 44%
      2016 36%
      2020 34%
      2024 ???

      Numbers bounce around a lot. Trend had been Latinos moving more to Dem side after the '80s, with average margin about 36%. Maybe 2024 was a signal the trend has reversed, or maybe it's just an anomaly (like 1996, 2004).

    3. Jasper_in_Boston

      Kevin, I think you're basing this on exit polls. Those are not bad. But they are also not great.

      Yeah. Cross tab at your own risk so soon after the election. It's all quite unreliable. My guess is the data point to a real pro-Trump shift by Hispanic voters larger than the electorate as a whole, but we really can't begin to confidently cite specifics for a long while yet.

  8. Dave Viebrock

    She’s a woman. And machismo pervades their culture. Is it really a serious question to wonder if it could make a 5-7% change?

      1. Srho

        Name one! (That isn't currently Mexico.)

        But seriously, although sexism seems to me the most obvious factor, you make a good point that I shouldn't overestimate it.

        1. Camasonian

          Laura Chinchilla Costa Rica
          Michelle Bachelet, Chile
          Cristina Kirchner, Argentina,
          Violeta Chamorro, Nicaragua
          Dina Boluarte, Peru
          Marta Ramirez, Colombia
          Dilma Rousseff, Brazil

          How many more do you want?

          1. Joseph Harbin

            I don't think AOC should be the Dem nominee in 2028, but part of me wishes that she'd run and win the election just so we'd get to see everybody's head explode.

      1. dfhoughton

        They championed the right of trans people to live in society without danger or judgment. The point wasn't to increase the number of trans athletes but to defend trans people who wanted to be athletes.

        The Republican anti-trans position is just vile. You all will live to regret it. It's pure cruelty. But throughout history that has been the conservative position: pure cruelty.

  9. middleoftheroaddem

    I am mixed race, half Hispanic: my father immigrated from Spain. Despite a couple of degrees, from so called elite schools, I have a broad friend group. In particular, I play cards with a group of Hispanic guys: about half of the men are working class or small business owners (house painter, one owns a small lawn care business, contractor, retired military) with the remainder work/worked in white collar professions.

    I certainty do not claim to speak for all Hispanics, but I have a few insights based on my friend group. Note, this is about a dozen guys and thus, clearly, not a valid sample.

    - The idea that broad, low skilled, immigration would be popular, because the new folks are Hispanic, is clearly wrong and some see it as offensive.
    - Abortion is a right they generally respect, but its not a voting issue.
    - LatinX and similar academic language is off putting.
    - BLM spoke to Black challenges, and a couple of the guys felt excluded from that movement.
    - Several see most politicians, of both parties, as dishonest and the Government as inefficient.
    - A couple of the guys feel that Trump is really funny.
    - Several loved the fight like attitude of Trump, after the attempted assassination.

    I would guess, about half of these guys voted for Trump. Note, this is from suburban San Francisco.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      ...academic language is off putting...

      Just one thing you mentioned, but a big one in my mind. Democrats don't live in a bubble like Republicans', full of their own facts made up of half-truths and lies. But Democrats too often speak in coded language that is designed to impress people among the in-group. Look at me, I'm so smart! If only my college professor could see me now!

      Liberals ought to speak in plain language. Make it easy for people to understand. The purpose of communication is to communicate, not to impress anyone.

      Too much of so-called liberal media is filled with the work of professionals and professors, and it's frankly boring. Speak like you've been in touch on occasion with real people.

      Many examples of the problem. A few hosts in particular on MSNBC. Practically everything that M. Yglesias writes. An Obama forum on pluralism and democracy yesterday was full of it.

      A few weeks ago, Jon Stewart was the guest on Ezra Klein's podcast. Klein (one of more egregious offenders around) dropped the word "orthogonal" in the middle of their conversation. Stewart's response was WTF?

      Stewart: I don’t know what it means. Tell me what that means.
      Klein: See, this is a problem with the left-wing coalition over here.

      Yup.

      1. Doctor Jay

        I agree with you. I grew up in a rural area, I work hard to speak in the language of the people I grew up with. To be understandable, and to avoid jargon.

        AND --- are there actual politicians that speak in this off-putting language? Apparently Harris rang this note, or maybe more of a note of "she sounds like a lawyer, and you can't trust lawyers".

        1. middleoftheroaddem

          Joseph Harbin and Doctor Jay - good insights. While I definitely don't find Trump funny, clearly some voters do.

          Based on two of my card friends, both guys who don't like politics or politicians, Harris felt like that teacher or policeman you hated, and Trump was the funny, tough guy.

          For these two guys, IF the standard was, which candidate would I rather have lunch with/who is more relatable, it seems that Trump is the choice. As an aside, one of these two guys was a huge Bernie fan: so this was not about policy....hmmm

          1. RZM

            Sorry, I can't give these guys a free pass just because they are Hispanic. If they think Trump is the guy they'd rather have lunch, with or is funny or tough or more relatable than either they are terrible judges of character or perhaps they're just stupid or assholes themselves. If I'm being kind I guess I could say thej just haven't been paying attention AT ALL for the past decade but I'm getting tired of making excuses for my fellow citizens. This is a moral failure on their part.

      2. HokieAnnie

        Most of the problem you cite is that the liberal media isn't liberal. It's patrician not middle/working class. And there's intense pressure from big media to keep it that way. There's no media infrastructure supporting the Democratic party like there is for the GOP. This one of the huge failures of the party in the 21st century. After Al Gore's loss they really, really needed to be spending large on building up a Democratic ally owned media that would push out left of center viewpoints without the pressure to go "both sides" and to never really take a side. MSNBC isn't cutting it, it's Patrician TV, also NPR, except for a few rare good local programs.

    2. Citizen99

      Good points, middleoftheroaddem. I had wondered about the "tough guy" thing following Butler. Of course, it's idiotic to want someone to be PRESIDENT because you think he's a "tough guy," rather than someone who is competent, intelligent, and knowledgeable. But that ship sailed a long time ago, when our political media successfully painted the most important administrative job in the world as a "celebrity that I can relate to" job.
      Another factor that's worth noting is that there is no such thing as a "Hispanic" voter -- they are as diverse as you can imagine, with folks from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile having completely different political experiences. Throwing "Hispanics" into the same box is almost as bad as categorizing people from China, India, Philippines, and Jordan as all "Asians."

      1. middleoftheroaddem

        Citizen99 - just want to agree, 100%: "Another factor that's worth noting is that there is no such thing as a "Hispanic" voter -- they are as diverse as you can imagine, with folks from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile having completely different political experiences."

  10. jdubs

    Is this new information? A day or two after the election we found out that preliminary information showed Harris had lost support amongst all minority groups.

    I thought other information showed that these losses were overwhelmingly in the uncontested states.

    Large turnout reductions in Texas and California need to be disentangled from nationwide results and estimates.

  11. rick_jones

    Like standards, the “nice” thing about reasons why Harris lost is there are so many to choose from…

    We can see that in the comments here. Along with a smattering of a candidate cannot fail, only be failed.

  12. Gary Goldberg

    There's no one thing that caused the election result. It was

    Tribalism
    Misogyny
    Malignant masculine machismo
    Voter perception of the economy
    Fear of immigrants
    Constant Republican lying about everything
    Poor Democratic messaging
    Low-information voters
    The Right Wing Nut-job Media
    Both-siderism of the mainstream media
    MAGA Trump cult
    Russian and Chinese influence operations
    Electoral memory-hole of the first Trump administration
    Income and wealth inequality
    Billionaire bros and the wealthy donor class

    They all matter. I suppose if Democratic billionaire donors paid for a Left Wing Nut-Job Media while our Democratic leaders lie incessantly until they get elected, we might start making a dent in the problem.

      1. aldoushickman

        "I'm pretty sure china was not trying to help Trump win."

        Why wouldn't they? They rolled Trump pretty hard the first time around.

        Trump: I'm so tough on Chy-Na! I will do a big TARIFF on Chy-Na!
        China: Oh please mr. big strong man, don't tariff us--how about we agree to buy a bunch of american goods?
        Trump: Deal! Being president is easy!
        China: [does not buy additional american goods] Trump, you are very wise!
        Trump: I am very wise!

      2. Jasper_in_Boston

        I'm pretty sure china was not trying to help Trump win.

        I disagree with your certainty. Trump is promising to do exactly what you'd want* if you hate America and the West, and want to supplant them.

        *Staff the US government and national security apparatus with incompetents;
        *Weaken the US economy via disastrous tax cuts, tariffs, deficit increases;
        *Gravely weaken alliances;
        *Openly valorize authoritarians;
        *Slash immigration (hurts topline US growth and competitiveness);
        *Question the importance of a defending a democratic Taiwan.

        Lots of good stuff like this! Against that, the only real threat is higher tariffs on Chinese imports, but the CCP has been dealing with this now for nearly a decade; they've both developed coping strategies and are no longer as dependent on their economic relationship with the the US as they used to be. Moreover, if you're Xi, you know the transactional president about to take office if anything is likely more open to deal-making than the outgoing one.

  13. Camasonian

    In point of fact, the biggest reason why Harris lost is because it is exceedingly difficult to defend the incumbent party when you are not the actual incumbent. No Democrat has ever successfully done that (or run from the VP office) in over 100 years. And every single successful non-incumbent Democrat won by running against incumbent Republicans.

    Adlai Stevenson lost trying to follow up Democrat Truman
    Hubert Humphrey lost trying to follow up Democrat Johnson
    Gore lost trying to follow up Democrat Clinton
    Hillary Clinton lost trying to follow up Democrat Obama
    Kamala Harris lost trying to follow up Democrat Biden

    By contrast.....

    FDR beat incumbent GOPer Herbert Hover
    Kennedy beat incumbent GOP VP Republican Richard Nixon
    Carter beat incumbent GOPer Gerald Ford
    Clinton beat incumbent GOPer GHW Bush
    Obama beat incumbent party GOPer McCain
    Biden beat incumbent GOPer Trump

    On the Republican side it is almost as difficult for Republican non-incumbents to follow up an incumbent Republican regime. In the past 100 years that has only happened twice. Republican Herbert Hoover won following up 2-term Republican Calvin Coolidge. And GHW Bush won following up 2-term Republican Ronald Reagan. Both Hoover and Bush had the advantage of running on economic prosperity. The roaring 20s for Hoover and the Reagan boom for Bush.

    What that means is that 2028 will be a very difficult year for Republicans to hold the presidency with any candidate not named Trump. I'm sorry but Vance, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, etc. None of them are Trump.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      But Dem Martin Van Buren succeeded Dem Andrew Jackson in 1836! Who can forget that, when the newly organized Whig party couldn't decide on a single candidate and ran four guys instead?

      You're absolutely right about incumbency. It's a nearly impossible task to succeed a president of the same party, especially for Democrats, a fact that was not given due consideration by the many who worked to force Biden out of the race in July. Harris did well, even very well, under the circumstances. The criticism that she blew what should have been an easily winnable race has been way off the mark.

      In retrospect, if Biden had to go, he should have stepped down from the office and let Harris be the incumbent president running for election. That might have helped. Ideally, that switch would have happened in 2023.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        if Biden had to go, he should have stepped down from the office and let Harris be the incumbent president running for election. That might have helped. Ideally, that switch would have happened in 2023.

        Yep. Save going with a different nominee in 2020 (Amy Klobuchar?), I'd say the above was probably Dem's best bet for victory this cycle.

    2. Jasper_in_Boston

      Adlai Stevenson lost trying to follow up Democrat Truman
      Hubert Humphrey lost trying to follow up Democrat Johnson
      Gore lost trying to follow up Democrat Clinton
      Hillary Clinton lost trying to follow up Democrat Obama
      Kamala Harris lost trying to follow up Democrat Biden

      The first four of those were contests when the Democratic Party was trying to win at least a third consecutive term (in 1952, it was a sixth term!). For many decades now, that has resulted in a vote share drop for the White House Party (zero exceptions, I think, going back to at least 1900). Even FDR's vote share dropped in 1940 (his party's third consecutive term) compared to 1936.

      Democrats were only trying for a second term last month, so Harris's loss doesn't fit the pattern of the previous two elections when a party lost the White House after only a single term (1980, 2020). But both of those losing candidates were harmed by significant economic turbulence. I sense a lot of Democrats are in denial about this, but surely "highest inflation in 45 years, after many years of very low inflation" constituted "economic turbulence" for at least some voters (and given our very evenly divided, 45-45 electorate, a big shift wasn't needed for the incumbent party to lose).

    3. HokieAnnie

      Calvin Coolidge did not serve 2 terms, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Warren Harding in August 1923 only about a year before the 1924 elections, so a small bit of one term then elected for a full term.

      But the rest of the post is correct, it's hard to run as the VP of the incumbent unless you are the VP now the president because of the death of a president.

      In one of future history's great what ifs - what would have happened if Biden had resigned in 2023 citing health issues?

  14. alzeroscaptain

    It’s probably not politically correct to say this, but the Hispanic community has a bit of a sexism and racism problem. Couple that with a high gullibility level and a low level of cynicism towards politicians and you have a swing towards Trump. Machismo and worship of the strong man on a white horse is a very real thing as well.

    This was not a good time to run a woman of color against a billionaire strongman who promised everything to everyone.

    1. aldoushickman

      While it's important to recognize that members of minority groups can also be racist and sexist, it's also important to note that Trump's margins were highest among white people.

      So, yeah, one could say that "the Hispanic community has a bit of a sexism and racism problem" but it's demonstrably a smaller problem than that of the white community.

      1. Atticus

        Your statement assumes white people voted for Trump because of racism and sexism. Obviously that is not true for all white people that voted for Trump.

  15. memyselfandi

    "It could still be inflation or wokeness or immigration. But any theory worth considering needs to account for why it affected Hispanic voters differently than others. So far none of them really do that." Wokeness can be expected to be a much a bigger problem with Hispanics and there overwhelming affiliation with the roman catholic church and its intolerant teachings about sex. Especially if they have the misfortune of having Irish clergy as is common in many regions in the US.

    1. emjayay

      A substantial number of Hispanic people are also fundamentalist Christianists. And from largely patriarchal/macho (=authoritarian) cultures.

      Apparently in many areas people were bombarded with video of Harris supporting sex change surgery for people in prison from a few years ago (which was probably what the law called for). So, you have voters with half the college degrees of white voters, either traditional Catholics or Christian fundamentalists, and Harris was a not-Hispanic woman supporting trans and by extension all LGBT people, not to mention abortion rights.

  16. n1cholas

    Maybe if I vote for the fascist threatening to deport me and my family, the fascist won't deport me and my family.

    Dumbest fucking timeline.

  17. Jasper_in_Boston

    It could still be inflation or wokeness or immigration. But any theory worth considering needs to account for why it affected Hispanic voters differently than others. So far none of them really do that.

    I think the Hispanic vote shift is largely explainable by inflation. Hispanics as a group are less affluent than the electorate as a whole. It stands to reason such persons are more negatively impacted by economic turbulence than the median voter. I know the same thing could be said of Black voters, but it may simply be that the latter's ties to the Democratic Party are stronger (also, Kamala Harris is a Black biracial woman). And of course, it looks like Black voters, too, increased their support for Trump (compared to 2020), as did most cohorts. We'll hopefully have better data six months from now.

    Also, while I've been skeptical of immigration as an explanation for Trump's victory, the plain fact is it's never only one thing, and perceptions of border chaos could easily be more salient for Hispanic voters than the general electorate. Many such voters may fear competition from lower-priced migrant workers; many such voters may fear that an anti-migrant backlash could lead to more anti-Hispanic discrimination; many such voters may have family they'd like to be able to bring to the US, and thus fear the potential for new, restrictionist immigration policies generated by "border chaos" discourse. Immigrants often have a complex relationship with immigration policy.

  18. Chip Daniels

    Once again with an alaysis of the election that refuses to address the elephant in the room.

    Which is that for three consecutive Presidential election cycles, around 45 % of the American electorate will knowingly and cheerfully vote for an outright and admitted authoritarian.

    The margins shift this way or that but no one wants to really grapple with what this means.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Which is that for three consecutive Presidential election cycles, around 45 % of the American electorate will knowingly and cheerfully vote for an outright and admitted authoritarian.

      Your "knowingly" is doing massive heavily lifting. Very clearly, large swaths of Trump's base are not avid consumers of political news or policy debates, and have scant knowledge of political science. Indeed, many such voters sincerely believe it is vote-stealing Democrats who are the really haters of democracy. Some of them are cosplaying. But not all.

      Your'e not wrong that some Trump voters (and, especially, major financial backers) ought to know better. Clearly a lot of the Wall Street types who just want a tax cut or the the evisceration of environment rules are actively dismissive of the danger to our democratic norms represented by Donald Trump. Such people are beneath contempt. They're also smugly stupid in their own way (ask Jack Ma sometime if authoritarianism is a good system for tycoons).

      But let's be blunt: a lot of Trump's voters are simply ignorant.

      1. HokieAnnie

        Jasper - disagree with you on a ton of stuff but you are dead on here - voters are uninformed and don't want to be informed. Sarah Caldwell I think it was ran a focus group - she is on staff at the Bulwark - right after the election and one of the questions was about voting for a candidate who is an Authoritarian. The group all asked her "What's an Authoritarian".

        This is why the Democrats really failed on not setting up their own information infrastructure.

  19. Max in WolfSuit

    I think it’s possible that US citizens - including all Latinos who voted, as well as all Puerto Ricans - will be safe from deportation after an unknown number of them have been rounded up, detained for who knows how long, and forced to prove their citizenship in immigration court. Aside from that, their lives will go on normally.

  20. bouncing_b

    One anecdata point.

    I'm good friends with an immigrant-citizen woman who grew up in Mexico. Relatively apolitical and not much for following news. Her husband is undocumented and runs a landscaping business. They have three born-here kids.

    She voted for trump, and told me "All these Guatemalans come here and work for less. They're undercutting [her husband's] business and making it harder to make a living."

    And she remembers the trump years as good times.

    She's not worried about her husband getting deported because nothing has happened to them or anyone she knows for more than a decade. Plus she sees these Guatemalans living and working openly. She keeps her head down and thinks everything will turn out ok.

    Authoritarian strongman leadership, crony capitalism, and lack of institutional accountability are normal conditions to her. Nothing trump did seems out of line. It's just how things are. Always have been and always will be. There's no point getting all upset about something that's not going to change.

    What could I say?

  21. jdubs

    So now we three competing theories based on a combination of vibes and incomplete analysis of incomplete data:
    - It was the inflation!
    - It was the WOKES!
    - It was the Hispanics!

    I see people trying to weave these together based purely on....vibes I suppose.

    Will be hard for people to let go of their initial gut reactions and guesses as more data comes in.

    1. HokieAnnie

      Right now vibes are all we have because we don't have the good expensive scholarly research needed to make a better judgement.

      Personally I suspect it was a combination including the openness for a strongman to just "fix everything" when sadly the strongman is going to break everything instead. This is our failure to have a media ecosystem that could counter all the disinfo floating around and maybe slyly inform those who do not wish to consume traditional news.

  22. D_Ohrk_E1

    Which would the average low-information, low-knowledge voter choose:

    a) Inflation was caused by runaway immigration and massive debt spending. We'll close the border and slash wasteful spending.

    b) Inflation was the result of exogenous events which led to supply chain disruptions and a little bit from excess money circulating in the economy from COVID recovery policies. We couldn't do much to fix the supply chain and the excess money prevented a repeat of the post-Great Recession slow recovery.

    They all pick (a) because they prefer simple answers and Trump was full of bullshit simplistic answers.

  23. bobbyp

    Oh, my....so many theories. Throw another one on the pile:

    The last time the Democratic Party presidential nominee won a majority of the white vote was 1964.

    I leave it to the reader to divine the implications of this fact.

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