President-elect Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House, thanks in part to a spike in support among various demographic groups. That includes a record jump among Latino voters.
According to NBC News exit polls, Vice President Kamala Harris still received the support of a majority of Latino voters, at 53%, while Trump captured about 45% of the vote. That’s a 13-point increase over the same demographic group in 2020. It’s also a record high for a Republican presidential candidate, beating George W. Bush’s 44% in 2004. The increase was especially dramatic among Latino men, with 55% going for Trump. this year, compared to 36% in 2020, NBC News exit polls showed.
NBC News’ David Noriega went to Nevada — a state Trump lost in 2016 and 2020 but won this time — to find out what’s driving a Latino family’s support for the president-elect.
Mario Alvarez said he struggled for months with who to vote for before finally deciding to vote for Harris. But after Tuesday’s results, Alvarez told Noriega he wasn’t angry that Trump won.
“I’m more happy than angry,” Mario said. “Because Donald Trump is going to help the country with the economy.”
His son, Mario Jr., voted for Trump, in part because of the Republican’s brashness.
“At first I’ll say I didn’t agree with him,” said Mario Jr., 29. “Then I started to see that he wasn’t afraid to express his opinion and I noticed that he wasn’t afraid to to say what he felt, however he felt from what people would say, I think I respect that about him.
Across the board, the economy was a top issue for Latino voters in this election. The elder Mario’s wife, Mireya, also voted for Trump and expressed concern that the next generation would not have the same opportunities as hers.
‘My biggest concern right now [is] what will happen to our new generation,” Mireya told Noriega. “They can’t even move out of their house anymore because everything is so expensive.”
The couple came to the United States from Mexico and Guatemala in the 1980s, crossing the border illegally as teenagers but later becoming citizens under President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program.
As NBC News reported, Latino voters — like other voter groups — have turned to immigration in recent years, with increased support for stricter enforcement against people arriving at the border.
In a September NBC News poll, 35% of Latinos said immigration hurts the country more than it helps. That’s the highest percentage of Latino voters saying so in the survey’s 20-year history.
Mireya said she saw herself and her husband as different from the migrants crossing the border illegally today.
“The people who come here are the criminals,” she said. ‘Those who have done something bad in their country. They’re running from the law.’
During his campaign, Trump promised to carry out mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants. On Thursday, he made good on that promise, telling NBC News that there would be “no price tag” on what he said would be the largest deportation of immigrants in U.S. history.
Although the Alvarez family has friends and relatives who are currently undocumented, Mireya told Noriega she is not concerned that they would be deported under Trump’s plan as “they are not breaking any laws.”
“My family is Latino and a lot of them are immigrants,” Mario Jr. added. to. “But at the end of the day, we are American.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
