“I even have undocumented friends who went with Trump.” Adrián Martínez, a young Puerto Rican, says that the vast majority of his friends, family and neighbors in the Hispanic community voted for Donald Trump. He speaks to this newspaper days after Americans went to the polls and gave their overwhelming support to the Republican candidate. And he does it from West Palm Beach, near Mar-a-Lago, the mansion and private club of the already president-elect. He says that he did not vote for anyone, that no option convinced him. “I think my life is going to remain the same with one or the other,” he says about Trump and his former rival, Democrat Kamala Harris. «But most of my people voted for Trump because of the economy. We have not been well for the last four years.” That concern about the economy reaches, in his words, even some undocumented immigrants, more concerned about making ends meet than about the threats of “mass deportation” that Trump has promised for those around him. of 11 million people in that situation in the US. Related News standard Yes Few taxes, many deportations: this is what the new US Government will be like. Javier Ansorena | Special envoy to West Palm Beach (Florida) Adrián’s is just a frame from a movie that has caused an earthquake in this election and that sows doubts about the future of the Democratic Party: Trump’s strength with the Hispanic vote, which has been shaken the traditional dominance of the Democrats.42% of the Hispanic vote42% of the Hispanic vote chose the Republican candidate, according to street surveys by the AP agency. It is the highest percentage since George W. Bush – a president popular among Hispanics, from Texas, who spoke Spanish poorly and had a Latina sister-in-law – obtained 44% in 2004. That changed with Barack Obama – it reached 71% of this electorate in 2012 – and Democrats were confident that, with someone like Trump as their candidate, their dominance among Hispanics would only deepen. Trump was the one who opened his candidacy for the 2016 election by insulting Mexican immigrants: “They bring crime, they bring drugs, they are rapists.” The one who in the White House approved the practice of separating immigrant families at the border. That this year he accused undocumented immigrants of “poisoning the blood of the country.” The same one that has not stopped improving its numbers among Hispanics: only 28% voted for it in 2016; but in 2020 they were already 35% and this year they have been close to beating the Democrats in this thriving electorate, which the Republicans have not won for more than five decades, when the Hispanic population was much lower than the current one. «Ronald Reagan “I always said that Latinos are Republicans, but they still haven’t realized it,” Jaime Flórez, who has directed communication for Hispanic affairs for the Trump campaign, explains to this newspaper. Flórez does not hide his enthusiasm for the results and the impact of his work on an electorate that “the Democrats have taken for granted.” The reference to Reagan has to do with an idea often repeated by Republicans. Conservative values of family, religion, freedom, and a spirit of sacrifice align much better with Hispanic voters than the ‘woke’ ideology that has captured much of the attention of the Democratic Party in recent years. “I agree neither on abortion nor on all that about gender changes,” Manuel ÁVila, a voter from Nevada, one of the states with the highest percentage of Hispanics in the country and decisive in this election, told this newspaper before the election. . Ávila was going to vote for Harris because Trump seems like a “danger” to his community, but it shows that, socially, he is, like many around him, close to the conservatives. He is not a blockElectoral experts repeat to everyone who I want to hear that the Hispanic vote is not monolithic. It is something well known: the Cubans from the Castro exile of Miami (Florida), with the Puerto Ricans – with US citizenship since birth – from Allentown (Pennsylvania), with the Mexicans from the Rio Grande Valley (Texas), who carry more generations in that American territory than almost any white family. On too many occasions, Democratic campaigns take them as an entity, as a bloc, and even associate them with other minorities, as with that common phrase of “our black and white communities.” brown”, in reference to the African-American minority and the Hispanic minority. Cubans in Miami who support Trump EFE A turnaround at the border and a joke without impact It is not only the economy. The transfer of the Hispanic vote from the Democrats to Donald Trump also has to do with the immigration chaos that the Administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has experienced. It is perfectly perceived in the border counties of Texas, where millions of undocumented immigrants have slipped in during the last four years. The most relevant case is Starr County, the most Hispanic county in the country, with 97% Hispanic population. In a territory that has voted Democratic since 1896, Trump has won. It is not something anecdotal: the Republican candidate has won 14 of the 18 Texas counties that line the border with Mexico (in 2016, the Democrats won 13). Nor did the insulting joke with Puerto Ricans that a comedian told in the run-up to a Trump rally in New York, where he called them a “floating garbage island,” have any impact on the result. Democrats tried to take advantage of it to mobilize the Hispanic vote. Especially in Pennsylvania, the most decisive state, where there is a significant Puerto Rican community. But Trump doubled his percentage of the Hispanic vote in this state compared to 2020. Trump has spoken to them as citizens who share problems and he is the solution. “Are you better off than four years ago?” has been the starting question at many of his rallies. An appeal to the pocketbook, which mainly affects the working class in which the majority of Hispanic voters fall. “Latinos have answered the question clearly,” says Flórez, who also believes that the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot with these voters. «We are very concerned that in the Democratic Party there is a special interest in pandering to the whims of the far-left wing of this party. Environmental, social issues, gender identity, critical race theory and other things that for us Latinos are not important at all,” he defends. “No one is doing me any favors as a Latino by calling me ‘Latinx’,” he adds about the inclusive term that emerged years ago among leftist elites. Economy, the great mobilizer The economy has been the great mobilizer of the vote, but not the only one. Hispanics have shown that the immigration chaos of the Biden-Harris Administration is something that has also affected them. A survey last month by Florida International University showed that immigration is the third most important issue for this electorate and that 36% are in favor of the mass deportations that Trump promises and 40% are in favor of building the wall with Mexico , the great unfulfilled promise of his first term. “Latinos are going from being solid Democrats to moving towards the center, to being independent voters,” explains Craig Allen, an expert in political communication at Arizona State University. “They perceive uncertainty in the values that Democrats represent right now and they are moving away from the institution of the Democratic Party.” This is an existential problem for Democrats. The demographic growth of the Hispanic electorate was its guarantee – or, at least, its hope – for the future. This Tuesday, 35 million Hispanics were called to the polls, more than double the number in 2000. Of the four million new voters in the US since the last presidential elections, half are Hispanic. “We have seen that the Latino vote decided the election,” says Lydia Guzmán, of Chicanos por la Causa, an organization in Phoenix, Arizona, not affiliated with any party and working to get Latinos to the polls. “And their courtship cannot be bringing our Tigres del Norte to a rally,” he says, referring to the popular northern music group that performed alongside Harris during the campaign. Guzmán recognizes that there is now an inclination in some sectors to blame the vote. Hispanic of his defeat. «This election has shown the importance that our electorate can have. If a party is unhappy with what has happened, what it has to do is reflect. “We are an electorate with power, we have to be courted, we have to be respected.”
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