With the 2024 election less than 10 months away, it’s helpful and wise to look closely at a key group of voters: Hispanics.

Rumor has it that there is a shift taking place in Hispanic voters switching their allegiance from Democrats to Republicans.  According to the Pew Research Center, Hispanics are projected to represent 14.7% of all eligible voters in the 2024 election.  Anyone who chooses to ignore the issues that are important to this group deserves to lose at the ballot box.  Keep in mind that the 2020 election was decided in the Electoral College by a little more than 43,000 votes through the combined margins in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

Let’s deal with dispelling the rumors by analyzing the facts.  The Pew Research Center showed that Biden won the Hispanic vote in 2020 by 21 points (59% to 38% for Trump), which was a significant decrease from Hillary Clinton’s 38-point advantage with this group in the 2016 election.  This represented a 10-point gain of Hispanic voters for Trump in the 2020 election — as well as a 2-point gain over Mitt Romney, when Trump received 29% of the Hispanic vote in 2016.

While I — together with the Pew Research Center — concede that a majority of Hispanics identify with the Democrat party (60% vs. 34% for Republicans) — I would argue that what really matters for Republicans is to continue the ongoing migration of Hispanics to the conservative camp. 

Let’s look at the issues that resonate the most with Hispanic voters.

A conservative foreign policy that confronts socialist regimes is welcomed by a large sector of Hispanics.  The majority of Cuban-Americans saw their homeland destroyed by socialist policies and can’t be fooled by the leftist woke propaganda spewed out by Democrat politicians.  Cuban-Americans supported Trump by 56% in Florida in 2020 and Governor DeSantis by 58% in his 2022 re-election race.

With the Venezuelan economy in shambles; with the Nicaraguan president harassing dissidents, Catholic priests, and bishops; and with Colombia’s first leftist president turning the country upside-down, Republicans can bring these voters to their camp by advocating America First policies.

More than any other issue, it’s the economy that is important to Hispanics.  While Biden emphasizes the low unemployment figures, Hispanics know that most of the newly created jobs are part-time in nature — which decreases the quality time people can spend with their families.  The majority in this group are working-class Americans who, while appreciating the modest wage increases that they received recently, were disappointed by how inflation depleted their budgets.  With $18 Big Mac meals, average dinner entrées ranging from $36 to $50 at most full-service restaurants, grocery prices up 30% from four years ago, high mortgage rates and high rental fees, home and car insurance rates up, and the average price for a new car being more than $45,000 (used cars more than $26,000), and with average 13% interest car loans, it is no wonder that most Hispanics view Bidenomics as voodoonomics.

Hispanics remember how unemployment was at its lowest level when Trump occupied the Oval Office prior to the COVID pandemic.  They admire his business acumen to get things done rather than the empty promises that Democrats proclaim.

Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or have entered our country through legal means disfavor illegal immigration.  They object to their taxes being channeled to programs that benefit illegal migrants rather than to programs that benefit their families, the homeless, or veterans.  To give illegals a free ride runs counter to their conservative value of hard work to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  Moreover, some employers favor illegal immigration because they generate higher profits by paying illegal migrants lower wages — which results in lower wages or loss of jobs for legal Hispanics.

Hispanics demand and expect respect from politicians.  They were not amused when all that First Lady Jill Biden could think of to praise Hispanic achievements was a reference to breakfast tacos and bodegas.  Similarly, after several prominent Hispanic Democrats called for a boycott of Goya products — Goya being one of the most popular and largest Hispanic-owned companies in the United States — because CEO Robert Unanue praised President Trump for signing an executive order in 2020 aimed at improving Hispanics’ access to educational and economic opportunities, it had the opposite effect.  Hispanics turned the boycott into a boycott, increasing the net sales of Goya products by 22% in the two weeks after the controversy.  And Hispanic disfavor attempts by Democrats to disrespect their culture and the Spanish language by pushing gender-neutral words like “Latinx.”  Hispanics are well pleased with calling one another hispanos and hispanas, and latinos and latinas.  Among Hispanics, of those who have heard of "Latinx," only 3% use it! 

A big sector of Hispanic (legal) immigrants came to the United States to escape the high crime rates in their countries.  The Democrat policies that privilege criminals over victims and defund the police are viewed by Hispanics as the antithesis of the law-and-order societies that they favor.  No one needs to remind them that surges in the crime rate hurt poor Hispanics the most. 

And this brings me to a highly controversial issue among Hispanics: abortion.  Depending on the survey that you look at, Hispanics are split on those who favor and those who disfavor abortion.  However, more recent surveys show that a majority of Hispanics favor abortion.  But the economy and immigration are rated higher than abortion as the most important issues to Hispanics voters.  Considering that Republicans need to increase the Hispanic vote only slightly in 2024, they could choose to limit their outreach initiatives to Hispanic evangelicals, who are more conservative in their views regarding abortion.  According to a 2022 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, Trump may appeal to this group by bragging about being responsible for placing three conservative justices in the U.S. Supreme Court, who contributed to overturning the Roe v. Wade decision.  To reach out to independents and conservative Democrats, Trump may say that he favors a 15-week federal abortion ban if a law is sent for his signature, while attacking Democrats for supporting abortion on demand up to the moment of birth by their continuous refusal to set any limits.

A Democrat friend of mine who strongly disagrees with my Republican ideology advised me to go back to my country.  Naturally, I indicated that since my family had left the communist regime that had oppressed the Cuban people for over 65 years, there was no point in my going back.  I don’t embrace any political ideology because of my nationality.  I base it on promises kept!

The Hispanic vote cannot be taken for granted — not in 2024, and not in future elections.  Politicians who deliver on their promises to this community will be rewarded with their votes.  I’m asking Republicans to rise up to this challenge!

Jorge E. Ponce has published the following book recently, available for purchase: EXAMINING THE PAST TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT: The Journey of a Cuban-American Refugee and What Led to His Conversion from Democrat to Republican.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.