Latino Voters May Be Changing Their Allegiances. It Could Change Their Influence, Too.

Once seen as a bedrock constituency of the Democratic Party coalition, Latino voters shifted to the right in the 2024 presidential election — helping former President Donald Trump defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

How much Latinos moved toward Republicans is up for debate. Early exit polls showed a majority of Latino men voting for Trump; however, these polls are notoriously inaccurate, particularly for measuring Latino voting. A somewhat more accurate count by the AP Votecast survey showed Harris winning 55% of the overall Latino vote compared to Trump’s 43%. That was down from the 63%-35% margin AP Votecast reported President Joe Biden put up against Trump in 2020.

Such shifting voting patterns may provide Latinos greater influence as a swing constituency coveted by both political parties. But could it also lead to fewer Latinos holding political office?

Latino political representation has increased at all levels, from the local city council to state legislatures and Congress, ever since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned electoral discrimination against racial minorities and its expansion in 1975 extended that protection to language minorities. In the House, there are currently 37 Latino-majority districts, mostly in California and Texas, and 47 members of Latino descent.

The Voting Rights Act created a process to protect the ability of racial minorities to vote for a candidate of their choosing through the creation of opportunity districts — city council, state legislature or congressional districts drawn with majority-minority populations — under certain circumstances. One of the most important circumstances identified by federal courts that upheld the law is when the vote choice of the white majority and that of a sizable racial minority group significantly diverge.

This racially polarized voting remains prevalent across the American South, where white voters cast ballots almost exclusively for Republicans and Black voters for Democrats. That has also been true for Latinos in the Southwest and some other areas with sizable populations like New York, Illinois and Florida.

In addition to demonstrating racially polarized voting, Voting Rights Act claims must show that the racial minority group is politically cohesive. That means the group largely votes as a bloc for a candidate of one party.

But if that racial polarization and political cohesion disappear — as they may have done in 2024 — then Voting Rights Act claims to create or defend existing Latino opportunity districts would be likely to fail.

“It’s going to be substantially harder to win Voting Rights Act lawsuits,” said Nicholas Stephanopolous, a Harvard Law School professor and voting rights expert. While what counts as “cohesion” may vary, it’s not unusual to see margins of over 80% support for one party. “It’s an absolute prerequisite for a Voting Rights Act lawsuit to demonstrate minority political cohesion. If you’ve got Hispanic voters voting 55% for the Democrat and 45% for the Republican, that’s almost the polar opposite of cohesion.”

Trump’s gains with Latino voters, however, may not hold. President George W. Bush won over 40% of the Latino vote in his 2004 reelection campaign, but Latinos turned hard back into the Democrats’ column in 2008.

“If it’s a one-off presidential result then it’s not that destabilizing,” Stephanopolous said.

More importantly, Voting Rights Act claims for opportunity districts “require a very local and particularized inquiry,” according to Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit that defends Latino voting rights.

That means that voting shifts at the presidential level matter far less than those in local, state or House races. And, so far, the Latino voter shift “seems to be confined to the top of the ticket” and “to certain geographies,” Saenz said.

South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, heavily Latino regions that moved from providing nearly two-to-one margins to Democrats in 2016 to backing Trump in 2024, demonstrate the largest Latino vote shift in downballot races. It is possible that it may be harder to bring future Voting Rights Act claims in these localities. But that doesn’t preclude such claims in other areas of Florida, Texas or the rest of the country — unless Latinos elsewhere continue to shift right.

Outside of Florida and Texas, the success of Voting Rights Act claims for Latino opportunity districts will “change very little,” Saenz predicted. There may even be new opportunities in states like Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Georgia as the Latino populations in those places grow.

Even if the trends of 2024 continue to accelerate and imperil future Voting Rights Act claims, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In California, there are already some districts along the Pacific coast that could be opportunity districts but can no longer show racially polarized voting, since white voters support Latino-preferred candidates in significant enough numbers. That same trend could be emerging in urban parts of Texas, Saenz said.

“People have said it’s highly desirable to have less racial polarization in voting. So Democrats may not like the election outcomes if they stop getting big majorities of the Latino vote. But from a more general perspective, is it good for democracy to have less racially polarized voting?” Stephanopolous said. “I think it is.”