Tuesday night’s explosive rout of the Republican party was supercharged by the fury of Hispanic Americans who turned out in record numbers in key battlegrounds to protest the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant assault on their communities. That’s what happened.” Melendez, the owner of a small housebuilding company in south Texas, voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election two years ago, attracted by his promise to secure the Mexican border and improve the economy. But on Tuesday, he cast his vote for the Democrats in a display of pure anger.
Two of his cousins and up to 15 of his building workers have been picked up and deported to Mexico by ICE. When Melendez voted for Trump in 2024 he expected the immigration raids would focus on those with criminal records, he said, not his relatives and employees. They’re taking our friends.
They’re they’re taking our workers, and they’re taking our family members. This is an attack against our community.” Melendez’s rage, replicated in the millions across Texas, Florida and other critical swing states, itself tells a story. It speaks to how Trump first wooed, and then alienated, the backing of many Latino voters, effectively shooting himself in the foot.
In the closing days of the 2024 presidential race, Trump made a special pitch to Hispanic voters. But on Tuesday night, Latino voters delivered Trump a resounding message of a very different sort. In a dizzying switch in affiliation, Hispanic American support for Republicans plummeted from the almost half who backed Trump just two years ago to 30% today.
According to the New York Times analysis of voter trends, election night marked a 28 point shift from 2024 in Latino allegiance toward Democrats nationwide. The dramatic turn was more notable than any other demographic voting group, with the next largest shift of 17% coming from Asian Americans. The shift helped propel Democratic wins in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as governor’s seats in states like Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
If Trump and the Republican party had assumed they had forged a new alignment with Hispanic voters, they must now think again. Any such alliance was abruptly and spectacularly uncoupled on Tuesday. Texas, the state with the second largest Hispanic populace after California, elected its first Latino governor, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, a native of the Rio Grande Valley whose mother is an immigrant from Mexico, in an astounding rebuke to decades of largely white Republican rule.
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