A majority of Latino voters, including Hispanic men, cast their votes for Vice President Kamala Harris in every state except Florida, according to a new American Electorate Voter Poll conducted by BSP Research and the African American Research Collaborative.
“Latino voters were not instrumental in the Trump victory,” BSP Research Co-founder Gary Segura said Tuesday during a briefing on the poll’s results. “If no Latino had cast a ballot, the outcome would be unchanged.”
Former President Donald Trump won the 2024 election with 50.3% of the vote. Harris claimed 48.1% of the tally.
Segura said the Latino election result was true at the national level and likely true in the battleground states, though if more Latinos had voted, they may have prevented several states from flipping from blue to red. Still, it’s unlikely they would have changed the election’s overall outcome because the size of the white voter majority was insurmountable, Segura argued.
The poll of 3,750 Latinos fielded Oct. 18 through Nov. 4 among those who voted in the 2024 election is a contrast to many exit polls, which found large numbers of Latinos had voted for Trump. Segura attributed the headlines to Trump improving his standing among nearly every subset of the electorate this year, including Latinos.
Flipping states to Harris in the face of white majorities would have required unreasonable Latino vote distributions, he said. In North Carolina, where Trump won by 3.3% and Latinos made up 7% of the vote according to exit polls, 97% would have needed to vote Democratic to flip the state.
“Our estimate of Latino vote share and the inter-election shift is smaller than that in the exit polls, which have historically miscalculated Hispanic support due to sampling methodology,” he said.
Of the Latino vote nationally, 62% went for Harris and 37% went to Trump. Among Puerto Rican voters, Harris polled 3 points higher nationally and 9 points higher in Pennsylvania after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called the American territory a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden nine days before the election.
The only Latino subgroup who cast more votes for Trump were Cubans, 54% of whom voted for the former President and 45% of whom voted for Harris.
While a majority of young Latino men voted for Harris, it was slim, with 51% voting for the vice president and 48% voting for Trump.
Like many other subgroups of voters, the top concern for Latinos was the economy. Inflation ranked first, followed by jobs and the economy, housing costs and health care costs. Social issues claimed the next four spots, topped by abortion rights, protection for immigrants, gun violence and border concerns.
A large majority of Latinos voted to protect abortion rights on state ballot initiatives in Arizona, Florida and Nevada, according to the poll, which found 79% of Latino voters supported a federal law guaranteeing access to abortion.
Latino voters also supported a law to provide permanent legal status to immigrants (80%), make it easier for family reunification visas (80%) and pass the bipartisan border security bill (71%).
The poll found Latino voters were especially worried that a Trump presidency would bring about violence, with 63% worried he’ll promote hate and division, 60% worried about Project 2025 and 60% fearful elected officials won’t speak out against white nationalism.