Young men and Latino voters helped drive the Democrats’ blue wave. Why did they abandon Trump?

The young men and Hispanic and Latino voters who helped propel Donald Trump to his presidential victory in 2024 swung sharply towards the Democrats in the midterm elections, contributing to the historic defeat for Republicans.

Charles Hunt, an associate professor of political science at Boise State University in Idaho, tells The Conversation Weekly podcast that the results suggest weakened support for Trump and his MAGA movement among these key groups of voters.

Hispanic and Latino voters “swung heavily towards Trump in 2024”, Hunt says. But midterm results in Florida, Texas and elsewhere “are showing these voters just slingshotting completely in the other direction,” he explains, citing early exit polls and analysis by The New York Times.

Not just back towards where they were in, say, 2018 or 2020 in terms of support for Democrats, but past that – being more supportive of folks like James Talarico in Texas than they have been of any Democrat in the last 20 years.

That’s really, really significant, especially since that’s a growing part of the electorate.

The New York Times’ analysis of voting trends reveals young voters swung back toward the Democratic Party by more than 30 percentage points – the largest shift of any age group. Young men, in particular, swung strongly back towards the Democrats.

The AP Voter Poll, a sweeping survey of voters across all 50 states, shows Democrats regaining ground among young and Hispanic voters, too.

The scale of the Republicans’ defeat goes beyond the usual midterm backlash against a sitting president, Hunt says. He draws a comparison with the 1974 midterm elections following the Watergate scandal and then-President Richard Nixon’s resignation:

This is a level of […] midterm blowback against an incumbent president of the sort that we haven’t seen since 1974. […] It’s really pretty historic and in a completely different league than 2018.

So what drove voters towards the Democrats?

Economic pressures are one reason, Hunt says. He points to the effects of the Iran war and tariffs, particularly on highly visible costs such as petrol:

A lot of political science tells us that economic issues are almost always front of mind for voters.

But those pressures also gave force to Democratic messaging about corruption and an economy favouring billionaires. He adds:

I think those issues tie together with a lot of Democratic messaging around things like corruption, and the influence of billionaires, and Elon Musk spending half a billion dollars in this election probably did not help, at the end of the day.

Disclosure statement

Charles Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Credits

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Justin Bergman, Gemma Ware and executive producer Grace Jennings-Edquist. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from Fox News, WCNC, CBS Pittsburgh and MS Now.

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