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February 18, 2024

With the 2024 election less than 10 months away, it’s helpful and wise to look closely at a key group of voters: Hispanics.

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Rumor has it that there is a shift taking place in Hispanic voters switching their allegiance from Democrats to Republicans.  According to the Pew Research Center, Hispanics are projected to represent 14.7% of all eligible voters in the 2024 election.  Anyone who chooses to ignore the issues that are important to this group deserves to lose at the ballot box.  Keep in mind that the 2020 election was decided in the Electoral College by a little more than 43,000 votes through the combined margins in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

Let’s deal with dispelling the rumors by analyzing the facts.  The Pew Research Center showed that Biden won the Hispanic vote in 2020 by 21 points (59% to 38% for Trump), which was a significant decrease from Hillary Clinton’s 38-point advantage with this group in the 2016 election.  This represented a 10-point gain of Hispanic voters for Trump in the 2020 election — as well as a 2-point gain over Mitt Romney, when Trump received 29% of the Hispanic vote in 2016.

While I — together with the Pew Research Center — concede that a majority of Hispanics identify with the Democrat party (60% vs. 34% for Republicans) — I would argue that what really matters for Republicans is to continue the ongoing migration of Hispanics to the conservative camp. 

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Let’s look at the issues that resonate the most with Hispanic voters.

A conservative foreign policy that confronts socialist regimes is welcomed by a large sector of Hispanics.  The majority of Cuban-Americans saw their homeland destroyed by socialist policies and can’t be fooled by the leftist woke propaganda spewed out by Democrat politicians.  Cuban-Americans supported Trump by 56% in Florida in 2020 and Governor DeSantis by 58% in his 2022 re-election race.

With the Venezuelan economy in shambles; with the Nicaraguan president harassing dissidents, Catholic priests, and bishops; and with Colombia’s first leftist president turning the country upside-down, Republicans can bring these voters to their camp by advocating America First policies.

More than any other issue, it’s the economy that is important to Hispanics.  While Biden emphasizes the low unemployment figures, Hispanics know that most of the newly created jobs are part-time in nature — which decreases the quality time people can spend with their families.  The majority in this group are working-class Americans who, while appreciating the modest wage increases that they received recently, were disappointed by how inflation depleted their budgets.  With $18 Big Mac meals, average dinner entrées ranging from $36 to $50 at most full-service restaurants, grocery prices up 30% from four years ago, high mortgage rates and high rental fees, home and car insurance rates up, and the average price for a new car being more than $45,000 (used cars more than $26,000), and with average 13% interest car loans, it is no wonder that most Hispanics view Bidenomics as voodoonomics.

Hispanics remember how unemployment was at its lowest level when Trump occupied the Oval Office prior to the COVID pandemic.  They admire his business acumen to get things done rather than the empty promises that Democrats proclaim.

Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or have entered our country through legal means disfavor illegal immigration.  They object to their taxes being channeled to programs that benefit illegal migrants rather than to programs that benefit their families, the homeless, or veterans.  To give illegals a free ride runs counter to their conservative value of hard work to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  Moreover, some employers favor illegal immigration because they generate higher profits by paying illegal migrants lower wages — which results in lower wages or loss of jobs for legal Hispanics.