More Hispanic voters across the country voted for Donald Trump than in any other recent election where he was a candidate, and South Florida — with a hub of Hispanic voters — was no exception.
Tony Figueroa, 31, president of the Miami Young Republicans, said he believes that having the economy under Trump again was a primary factor in what brought droves of Hispanic men and women to the polls in ways not seen before.
Many people within the Miami Young Republicans are young professionals either “starting out in our careers” or “growing in our careers,” Figueroa said, and they want to do that within a strong economy.
Miami-Dade County, with a large Hispanic population, favored Trump in this election, with 55% of voters casting a ballot for him.
Exit polls demonstrated an increase in the percentage of votes for Trump from Hispanic communities in this year’s election in comparison to the 2020 and 2016 elections.
For example, according data from Edison Research, Joe Biden won among Latino men by 23 percentage points, with 59% voting for Biden and 36% voting for Trump in 2020. Then, in the 2024 election, an estimated 54% of Latino men indicated support for Trump while only 44% indicated support for the Biden administration.
Edison Research called this change “a rather extraordinary shift in four years’ time.”
In Miami-Dade County, 68% of Cuban Americans had said they would vote for Trump, which is the highest recorded approval rate for Trump among Cuban Americans, according to Florida International University’s Cuba Poll.
The 2016 poll, in contrast, registered 35% approval for Trump, while the 2020 election saw 59%.
“The shift to the right is definitely happening,” said Philip M. Carter, a professor of Linguistics and English and an affiliated faculty at the FIU Cuban Research Institute.
Factors behind the trend
Carter said one factor is that many Hispanic voters in South Florida may be “traumatized by exilic situations,” particularly from the “political trauma or political collapse in their countries of origin.”
“These are people who are really skeptical of the left side of the political continuum,” Carter said. And the Republican Party makes voters believe “the left side of the American political continuum looks like what is understood to be the left in their countries of origin,” he said.
Carter said governments in Cuba and Venezuela, for example, have wreaked havoc through communist and socialist ideologies, which he said now-South Florida residents would not want to see replicated in America.
Sebastián Arcos, the FIU Cuban Research Institute interim director, agrees with the notion that fear of the circumstances in one’s home country led many Hispanic voters to become increasingly attracted to the political right, particularly Trump and the “Make America Great Again” movement.
“The Republican Party has done a very effective job in recruiting recent arrivals into the United States, convincing them that they represent the traditional vision of the United States as a country of immigrants where people came to succeed and where this success is possible,” Arcos said.
Hispanic voters tend to prioritize the economy, immigration, respect for the rule of law and security, Arcos said.
The Democratic Party’s emphasis on what Arcos called “cultural war issues” such as transgender rights, are “alien” to many in the Hispanic community, he said. “That has pushed away a significant portion of Hispanics, as a whole,” he said.
One less widely recognized factor influencing the shift is Spanish-language media in South Florida, “where disinformation really, really, really runs rampant,” Carter said.
“This is especially true on (Spanish) talk radio, where right-wing conspiracy theorists who kind of cultivate and create and maintain a cult of personality with large audiences circulate disinformation on their radio shows,” he said.
‘Very to the point’
Lots of Hispanic voters of all ages are eager for the next four years as Trump looks ahead.
Figueroa believes the Democratic party has gone too far on some issues that are “not appetizing” to certain Hispanics.
“For a lot of Hispanics, we’re very traditional, we’re very conservative, we’re very to the point,” he said, adding: “If a candidate comes in and is able to understand where this community comes from and kind of shape their policy in a way that can resonate with voters here in Miami-Dade County, they’re going to be able to win.”
“And that’s really what Trump was able to do, really understanding the Hispanic community here, really understanding that we’re not a monolith, where Hispanics here are different than in South Texas, southern California or anywhere else in the country.”
Nicolas DeCubas, a 26-year-old web developer and small-business owner from Coral Springs who voted for Trump on Election Day, said Kamala Harris’ attempts to appeal to minority groups often came across as disingenuous to him.
“The way (Harris) tried appealing to Latino voters, I think rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” he said, adding: Trump “was kind of more honest and not trying to appeal to stereotypes like that.”
DeCubas also finds it “super offensive” when Democrats question why Hispanic voters support Trump if he plans to implement a mass deportation plan.
“None of my family is going to get deported because we’re all legal. We’re in this country legally, and we’ve lived here our whole lives,” he said. “So, a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, if you voted for him, you’re going to get deported,’ it’s just like the nail in the coffin on how backwards this all seems.”
Figueroa said he’s seen a similar phenomenon play out with Hispanics being called “traitors” to their ethnicity.
Figueroa said there may be the perception that “if you’re Hispanic, you have to vote Democrat. If not, you’re going to get deported, they hate you and Trump doesn’t like your family.”
He calls that “just the biggest nonsense.” He added, “That’s kind of the biggest misconception, that we’re betraying our own people.”
