Latino voters sent the Democratic Party a clear message on Election Day: You’re losing us.
Now, Democratic members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are trying to explain to their colleagues why Latinos are turning away from the party and how Democrats can fix it.
Spoiler alert: It’s the economy, estupido!
When NOTUS asked No. 3 House Democrat Pete Aguilar whether economic messaging needed to take priority to win back Latinos, his answer was emphatic: “Absolutely.”
“I’ve said this time and time again, Latinos need to be targets for persuasion, not just turnout,” Aguilar said.
While a majority of Latinos still supported the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024, support — particularly from Latino men — precipitously declined for Kamala Harris when compared to Joe Biden. In 2020, Biden got 63% of the Latino vote. In 2024, support for Harris among the community dropped to 55%.
Only 36% of Latino men supported Donald Trump in 2020 — that’s a stark contrast from the 55% of Latino men who broke for Trump this year, according to exit polls. The dynamic was even more pronounced along the U.S.-Mexico border.
While that may be an indication that border security is actually becoming more of an issue for these voters, Latino Trump supporters answered in polling that the economy was still the most important issue for them.
House Democrats say they’ve heard the message loud and clear.
“It should be a priority,” Rep. Maxwell Frost told NOTUS when asked about economic messaging.
“When we look at the Latino community, we’ve been focusing on the issues of immigration. We can’t pigeonhole communities in the very specific issues,” Frost said. “Latinos care about jobs, good paying jobs, they care about health care, they care about housing.”
California Rep. Jimmy Gomez agreed. Material conditions should be an emphasis for Democrats, he said.
“Housing, jobs, lower the cost of living, and then talk to them about how we’re doing that — that’s where I think we should focus,” Gomez said.
While Trump’s gains do not immediately translate into a full embrace of his agenda — only 36% of Latinos support mass deportation, for instance — it was a clear rejection of the Biden-Harris economic record.
The 2024 election also marked the end of the Barack Obama era, when Democrats enjoyed around 70% support among Latino voters.
While the economy was clearly a central issue for Latino voters, Democrats in the CHC suggested it was important to take some time to listen to Latino voters more and think about how Democrats could address their concerns.
“We need to listen, not to hear,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who is running unopposed as chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
“Hearing is one thing. You hear a siren; you listen to people,” Espaillat said.
For Rep. Gabe Vasquez, the responsibility of listening to voters “is incumbent on the candidate.”
But he also said that more experienced members of Congress need to reconnect with voters.
“Conditions on the ground change,” he said. “And so, the issues that were relevant maybe six years ago with the Latino population may not be as relevant as they are today.”
Vasquez was careful to note that Latinos are not a “monolith.”
“It has to be more than talk. It has to be supporting candidates that actually reflect the values of those districts,” Vasquez said. “Which means we can’t have lazy candidates.”
But while there was general agreement that candidates needed to listen to voters and not just assume that Latinos would support them, there was also consensus that the major issue was the economy.
Latinos, Rep. Norma Torres said, “simply want an opportunity for a good wage and a fair employer.”
“We’re getting back to that message,” she said. “And we are positive that we will get back the people that we’ve lost in this election.”
Even in states where Trump won decisively — like Florida — lawmakers said a strong economic message was the path to tapping into Trump’s new coalition.
“It was about the economy,” Rep. Darren Soto said, noting he comes “from Florida, from the land of Trump.”
“We have a strong message. We just have to make sure we’re doing a better job of delivering it,” he said.
Of course, members said it wasn’t entirely about the economy.
Frost brought up the anti-trans ads that Trump and Republicans ran, claiming Harris was for “they/them.”
He said examining that ad and why it was effective revealed a lot of issues that Democrats needed to message on better.
“It’s actually an ad with multiple issues in it,” he said.
“It’s criminal justice. It’s trans. It’s health care. And it’s also spending money on things that are helping us — and that was kind of the whole crux of those ads,” Frost said.
Rep. Delia Ramirez suggested Democrats still needed to make an affirmative case on immigration for Latinos as well. She said Democrats need to show Latinos that their party is one that “understands that one of their main priorities is to ensure that the next generation has the resources that perhaps they didn’t have coming to this country.”
She added that Democrats also couldn’t assume one immigrant from one country had the same issues as another immigrant. “To assume that a Guatemalan and a Chilean had the same experience tells us a lot about the work that we have to do to actually understand the community,” Ramirez said.
But Democrats swore they have a plan to get back the Latino voters they lost in the last election.
Aguilar said Democrats were doing a “deep dive” on voter data and would have more answers soon on how they lost many of their voters.
Still, other Democrats suggested they knew the answer — and that it wasn’t that difficult to decipher.
“Our families,” Espaillat said, “all they want is opportunities.”
“We’re not gonna be sidetracked by another debate that’s looking to be divisive,” he said.
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Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.