By Juhem Navarro-Rivera
One of the narratives coming out of the 2020 elections results is the high proportion of Latinx voters supporting President Donald Trump’s reelection. Depending on what polls you look at, the national exit polls, AP Votecast, or Latino Decisions, the Latinx vote for Trump ranged between twenty-seven and thirty-five percent. This means that Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the majority of the Latinx vote, following the pattern of Latinx voters preferring Democratic Party candidates since at least 1980. Still, President Trump increased his share of the Latinx vote since the 2016 exit polls and the Latino Decisions survey from that year.
To those who have studied Latinx politics for years, this comes as no surprise. There has always been a significant Republican cohort in the Latinx community. Trump’s performance with Latinx voters is not out of step with previous elections but a regression to the mean. Since 1980 only two Republican candidates have received less than thirty percent of the Latinx vote according to the exit polls: Mitt Romney in 2012 (twenty-seven percent) and Donald Trump in 2016 (twenty-eight percent).
