Why are Latino men moving away from Democrats?

And how can liberals win them back? For me, it’s a topic that hits close to home.

My dad’s politics wouldn’t be of much interest to the wider world, except that he’s part of a group that constituted one of the most puzzling footnotes to the 2020 election: Latinos who voted for Trump. Between 2016 and 2020, Trump improved his overall support among Latinos by four percentage points, while Biden’s support declined from Hillary Clinton’s by one point — and in some places the change was even more significant. In Florida, Biden won Latinos by just five points, a massive swing from Clinton’s 27-point margin in 2016. In Texas, Trump closed the margin among Latino voters by 10 points.

To many progressives, the trend was a shock — how could a president who so brazenly denigrated Latinos and immigrants actually increase his stock among those same voters? — but it was also a wake-up call. For a generation, Democrats have taken comfort in the assumption that long-term demographics were on their side: As America became less and less White, Democrats would enjoy an increasing advantage in national politics. The growing Latino vote was a — maybe the — linchpin of this thinking. Which means that if, in fact, Latinos are drifting from Democrats, it constitutes an emergency for the party, one that could haunt them in 2022, 2024 and beyond.

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