Postelection analyses proceed to disregard the political and financial energy of Latinas. The large story in regards to the Latino vote is that the electoral bets the Trump and Harris campaigns made to provoke males of colour paid off for MAGA extremists. However each candidates’ willful neglect of Latina voters is one other menace to American democracy.
Many are saying this election was a referendum on the economic system and desires of working-class voters. The place do Latinas match into that story?
Latinas made up about 12% of all registered female voters in 2024. They constituted greater than 20% of registered voters in 5 necessary states: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Regardless of being the nation’s most underpaid demographic group, in 2021 Latinas contributed $1.3 trillion to the nation’s gross domestic product, an quantity bigger than the economic system of Florida. This yr they headed to the poll field with their wallets, livelihoods and futures on the road. And they didn’t again the GOP: Exit polls estimate that 3 in 5 Latina voters supported Vice President Kamala Harris. For the third time they rejected MAGA extremism within the face of majority support for the Trump ticket by non-Hispanic white voters, each women and men.
But the 2024 election did present that the numerous shifts towards former President Trump included Latinos. The polls indicate {that a} majority of Latino males supported the Republican presidential ticket for the primary time since information on Latino voters have been collected, and the share of Latina voters supporting the Democratic ticket has narrowed over the last three cycles with Trump because the Republican nominee.
Messaging across the economic system has been deemed the true takeaway from this election cycle. But neither social gathering provided voters a complete method or addressed the problems of most concern to Latinos.
Each campaigns failed to handle the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Nice Recession, each of which annihilated Latino households when it comes to their well being and wealth. Latinos had been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, inflicting many to exit the workforce to care for his or her households lower than a decade after their demographic misplaced 66% of their wealth within the housing disaster. Worse, neither marketing campaign’s financial messaging spoke to Latinas. On the 11th hour, the Harris marketing campaign rolled out an “opportunity agenda” for Latino men with no equal for Latinas.
Electoral postmortems have strengthened the invisibility of Latina voters and their contributions to the American economic system. Their financial grievances, like these of males of colour, are well-founded even when they didn’t react to them by voting for Trump.
Our recent report at Latina Futures 2050 Lab reveals a troubling disparity in hourly wages, inserting Latinas on the backside of the earnings spectrum in America. To realize the weekly earnings of non-Hispanic white males, Latinas must work 64 hours — 24 beyond the everyday workweek. Relatively than shrinking with academic attainment, the wage hole with white males in reality widens among the many college-educated. Analysis means that for Latinas who enter the workforce at the moment, the wage disparity quantities to more than $1.2 million over the 40 years of a typical profession.
Latinas are additionally now extra doubtless than Latino males to be their households’ breadwinners, partly on account of their larger academic attainment. Their households are sometimes multi-generational, together with spouses, youngsters and aged members of the family, making a heavier monetary burden with every further dependent. Within the face of inflation and rising inequality, Latinas’ earnings have been inadequate to outlive, not to mention thrive.
The economic system constantly ranks as a prime situation for Latinas, with two-thirds figuring out the wage gap as a big problem in a Pew survey this yr. So why did the bulk nonetheless assist the Democratic ticket this election? And why is there a big well-documented gender gap for Gen Z between younger Latina voters, who overwhelmingly backed Harris, and their male friends, who supported Trump?
Maybe ladies additionally prioritized points similar to democracy and abortion, which mattered way more to Harris voters. And Trump’s repeated invites this cycle to males of colour to affix the MAGA motion catapulted his misogyny — pledges to “protect women” whether they “like it or not” — to new, persuadable audiences. Regardless of the causes, Latino males’s assist for Trump appeared to beat their party affiliation — most lean Democrat — and down-ballot selections, with Democratic Senate wins in Arizona and Nevada.
The GOP’s uniform management of the Oval Workplace, Senate and Home of Representatives come January confirms that voters consider they had been higher off 4 years in the past than they’re now. But Democrats should not heed calls to pander selectively to Latino males. As an alternative they need to additionally meaningfully interact Latina voters, who’ve larger electoral participation charges and preferences for the Democratic ticket than their male friends.
If candidates and events proceed to miss the financial wants of Latina voters, they threat alienating one in every of America’s most influential blocs. In accordance with information from the Nationwide Ladies’s Legislation Heart and the Institute for Ladies’s Coverage Analysis, Georgia, a swing state, ranks forty fifth within the nation for wage fairness amongst Latinas; Texas and California, the place Latinos are the plurality inhabitants, rank forty eighth and fiftieth respectively (regardless of the latter’s status as a progressive stronghold).
Within the Golden State and elsewhere, Latinas is not going to wait quietly for change. They need to see financial justice delivered, not deferred.
Sonja Diaz is a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab.
