When results were pouring in on Election Day earlier this month, many media outlets were searching to see where exactly President-elect Donald Trump would be able to take votes away from Vice President Kamala Harris across the country. One of the most widely-reported reasons for Trump’s victory was his overperformance among Latinx voters — including a 14-point improvement in that voter demographic from the 2020 election Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Many outlets following the election began to speculate on how Trump gained such a seismic increase among Latinx voters — something that led to an unfortunate rise in articles such as the Chicago Tribune publishing “I am a Mexican American who voted for Donald Trump: No I don’t hate myself,” and Forbes’ article “Harris Won The College-Educated Vote—But Trump Gained Young And Latino Voters.”
Ignoring the issue that Forbes’ headline implies that Latino voters are not college educated, there are a few problems that come up when assessing how the media reacted to the increase in Latinx votes favoring Trump. First, op-eds where a writer is forced to state that he does not “hate himself” should not have been on the table to begin with.
Though Trump has spoken discriminately towards Latinx people throughout his former administration and on his 2024 campaign trail, it’s also necessary to consider the fact that the current Biden and Harris administration has not been favorable towards working-class voters, a large part of which includes Latinx voters. Nobody owes an explanation over who they voted for — especially not because of ethnic background.
The bigger issue here, and the main point of this article, is the grouping of the “Latino” vote altogether. As of right now, the term “Latino” includes people from Mexico, Central American countries and South American countries. This is despite the fact that people from different countries migrate to different areas in the United States, take on different types of jobs, fit into different economic classes and needless to say, vote in different ways.
When reviewing how the “Latino vote” breaks down between different regions, we see that people of Mexican descent voted overwhelmingly for Harris at 62%, people of Cuban descent voted in favor of Trump at 58%, people of Puerto Rican descent voted for Harris at 59%, while the closest demographic was people from South American countries, favoring Harris at 53%.
This point is also relevant to other voting “groups” the media focuses on throughout election time. The “Asian” vote includes people from all across the continent of Asia. The “uneducated” vote includes both people who have not gone to college and those who are still completing their degree. The “white” vote includes a wide range of different people and populations.
The point here is simple — the media needs to do a better job breaking down how voting groups are attracted to different candidates and issues. We’re far beyond the point of simplifying results to generalized demographics. Nobody likes being put into boxes, and the 2024 election is a prime example of why this process needs to change.
wjackso2@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @Sora_Shimazaki, Pexels
