The stereotype of a Trump voter has pervaded the minds of individuals across the world. It’s a cartoonish image of a person in a MAGA hat, profoundly racist, and above all… white.
The results of the 2024 election, on the other hand, tell a different story.
Polling data from multiple outlets implies that a surge in support from Black males and Latino males ultimately helped catapult Trump to victory in a few key states.
The biggest inroads Trump made, of all these groups, were with Latino men, which Trump won by a whopping 54% to Harris’ 44%.
That’s up from 2020, where 59% of the same group voted for Biden only 36% for Trump.
The outpouring of support from Latino males would seem surprising, given Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and the ‘floating island of garbage’ comment about Puerto Rico made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
But when it comes to the economy, Latino males are disproportionately likely to work in trucking, construction, and other low-wage manual labour jobs.
Those jobs are likely to be deeply impacted by inflation and notice a clear difference in how far their pay cheques stretch when comparing the years under Trump to those under Biden.
According to former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, as stated in an interview with NBC News: “The Latino communities are dividing or cleaving along the lines every other community is: urban versus rural, education level and so forth, especially when you compare what happened in south Texas and rural communities with Latinos versus big cities. I’ll bet you find the drop-off in voting was bigger.”
And this trend is certainly not exclusive to Latino males. A September poll from the NAACP showed that one in four black males supported Trump.
In Pennsylvania, 24% of black males voted for Trump – more than double the percent that voted for him in 2020.
Black males, like Latino males, are likely to work in low-wage manual labour jobs – so inflation likely hit them hard as well.
Like Latino males, they are less likely to hold college degrees than the general population.
According to one Brookings institute study: “Contemporary discourse on Black male voters often relies on oversimplifications, treating this diverse group as a monolithic voting bloc.”
Trump won working-class voters without a college degree with 55%, while Harris won college-educated voters with 57%.
These trends imply that Trump’s appeal to the working class is certainly not exclusive to whites, which illustrates an outreach and messaging problem for Democrats they would be wise to stop ignoring.
Calling certain demographics “garbage” and dismissing entire classes as racist may not have been the winning strategy they predicted.
Feature image courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Flickr, with thanks.
