As Democrats look ahead to the midterms and the presidential election of 2028, one key data point has stood out about the last White House race: the number of Hispanics who stayed home, supporting neither President Trump nor former Vice President Kamala Harris.
New research from Voto Latino shows that Hispanic voters had the most significant decrease in turnout of any racial or ethnic group during last year’s election.
The research revealed that about 4.5 million Latino voters who cast ballots in 2020 stayed home in 2024.
Of those “drop off voters,” more than 70 percent were predicted to be Democrats and about 48 percent of those voters were modeled as strong Democrats, according to the organization.
The data confirmed what Maria Teresa Kumar, the organization’s founding president and CEO, suspected in the final weeks before the election.
“Our frustration was that we were seeing all these folks that were never contacted even leading up to the election,” Kumar said in an interview with The Hill. “And this election, I would say, was a persuasion campaign. It wasn’t turnout. But even in that turnout there was a huge deficit on who the campaign ended up reaching.”
In the final days before the election, as Voto Latino and other organizations went into the field and knocked on the doors of low-propensity voters in battleground states including Nevada and Pennsylvania, Kumar said she realized, “we were their first touch.”
Voto Latino’s research shows that Latinos younger than the age of 40 amounted to almost half of the drop-off in voting. And among those young Latinos, about 80 percent were predicted to be Democrats and as many as 49.5 percent were said to be “strong Democrats.”
The organization’s research reveals that there were major drops in support in high-population counties, including Miami-Dade County in Florida, and El Paso, Texas, where Latino voters declined by more than 8 percent and more than 11 percent, respectively.
In addition to the lack of outreach, Democratic strategists say there are several reasons for the decline among Latino voters, including a lack of connection to either candidate.
“They didn’t show up because they weren’t motivated by Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and they thought Donald Trump is a racist,” said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha. “Their lives, no matter which party they vote for, haven’t really changed.”
A Pew Research Center analysis revealed that 48 percent of Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Trump, while 51 percent supported Harris. Trump’s high percentage was boosted by Latino men, who were drawn to his column by Trump’s campaign talk on issues including the economy.
Rocha argued that while Trump hasn’t owned up to his promises on the campaign trail, “at least he was talking about it.”
Recent polls suggest an opening for Democrats with Hispanic voters, as they show Trump has lost favor with the demographic since last year. It’s something that also could make a difference in this year’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
A New York Times/Siena poll out late last month showed 69 percent of surveyed Hispanics said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance, and 58 percent said the economy has gotten worse since Trump took office.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll echoed those results, with just 32 percent of Hispanic voters approving of the president’s job performance.
And a poll by Somos Votantes, a left-leaning Latino voter group, found a similar pattern in a survey they commissioned that was released last month. Their poll found that Trump’s favorability has continued to fall throughout the first year of his second term. In February, he was down 12 points. And last month he was underwater by 20 points.
Still, Kumar said Democrats haven’t fully learned their lesson with Hispanic voters from 2024.
“No, the party has not gotten better, I would say,” she said. “And the reason being, is because if you were to ask the Latino voters what policy issues and relief do the Democrats stand for that are going to make them less scared, able to pay rent, there’s still no policy platform on it, and yet they they’re seeing their loved ones getting picked up and kidnapped in broad daylight.”
“To this day, with the exception I would say of the Hispanic caucus, there has not been collective outrage to what is happening in the Latino community,” Kumar said.
Kumar pointed to June, when federal agents forcibly removed Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She said the Democrats should have banded together to more strongly protest Padilla’s treatment.
But Rocha said Democrats can win over Hispanic voters if they highlight the working-class issues that matter to them, including the economy, health care and immigration, instead of focusing on democracy as they did in 2024.
“They need to first admit that they’ve made a mistake and ask for forgiveness,” Rocha said. “You have to first admit that you lost your way and folks will welcome you back if you seem genuine.”
