Once solidly Democratic, Latino voters are increasingly moving toward Republicans — with big implications for both parties.

What do the numbers show? 
A steep rise in the number of Latinos who identify as Republican. In 2016, Hispanic Americans were 36 percentage points more likely to say they were Democrats than Republicans. That gap narrowed to 28 points in 2020 and to 12 points in 2023. The shift was apparent in the 2020 election, where Joe Biden won Latino votes by far smaller margins than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. In Miami-Dade County — which is 70 percent Latino, mostly Cuban-American — Biden won by 7 points, down from Clinton's 29. "The firm hold that the Democrats had on Hispanics in Florida seems to have given way," said Eduardo Gamarra, a political scientist at Florida International University. In Texas' Starr County, which is 96 percent Hispanic and majority Mexican-American, Clinton beat Trump by 60 points; Biden won by only 5. The move right is expected to continue this year. In a recent New York Times poll, Trump — who took 28 percent of the Latino vote in 2016 and 38 percent in 2020 — led President Biden among Latino voters by 46 percent to 40. The ramifications of this shift reach far beyond the November race. 

Why is that? 
Because Latino voters' influence is growing fast. An estimated 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year — that's about 15 percent of all eligible voters — double the number in 2008. And they hold great power in swing states, including Arizona and Nevada, where about 1 in 4 voters is Latino and where nearly 4 in 10 voters who've reached voting age since the 2022 midterms are Latino. For decades, experts believed that this rise in Latino voters would aid Democrats, but not anymore. "The Latino electorate used to be seen as a massive liability for Republicans," said Daniel Garza, executive director of the Libre Initiative, a conservative group targeting Latino voters. "Now it's turning out to be an asset." 

What's behind the shift? 
There's no single factor. Some experts point to Latinos' rising socioeconomic status and their focus on pocketbook issues, an area where many trust Republicans over Democrats. Others note that many Latinos — a majority of whom are Catholic or evangelical — are socially conservative and receptive to the GOP side of culture war issues such as the fight over gender identity. Some Latino organizers say the GOP has also made effective outreach efforts to a bloc that Democrats have long taken for granted. And Trump is a major factor. His blunt speech and jingoism appeal to many Latino voters. Political demographer Ruy Teixeira says Democratic activists have made a mistake in talking to working class Latinos as "brown people who are oppressed." Those voters don't buy that narrative and instead think, "I'm here to get ahead in life. I'm here to make a good life for my family.... I'm American." 

What about Trump's migrant talk? 
Trump's rants about immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country" has not alienated as many Latinos as might be expected, and for some it's a draw. A recent study found a third of Latino voters — most of whom were born in the U.S. — believe recent arrivals from Latin America are hurting their social status. They feel "resentment" at being "lumped in" with these migrants and worry about being wrongly deported, said political scientist Flavio Rogerio Hickel Jr. Many Latinos are angered by what they see as border chaos. In the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley, support for a border wall doubled from 2018 to 2022, to about 35 percent, according to a University of Texas study. When Trump vowed at a rally last November in Hialeah, Fla. — where nearly three-quarters of residents are foreign-born — to launch the biggest deportation effort in U.S. history, the crowd erupted in cheers. 

How are the campaigns courting Latino voters? 
Biden's team launched its Hispanic outreach operation, Latinos Con Biden-Harris, in March, with a plan to spend $30 million on spring advertising. The campaign has targeted ads at Cuban-Americans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, and Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have done interviews with Spanish-language outlets. The conservative Libre Initiative launched a "seven-figure" campaign in April to engage Latino voters, while the five-year-old organization Somos Votantes is spending $33 million to mobilize Latinos for Biden and Democratic House and Senate candidates. Latino voters will be crucial in November, political consultants agree — but broad efforts to rally them may prove difficult. 

What is the challenge? 
Latinos are not a monolithic group. They are a racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse cohort with diverse political beliefs and concerns. What's important to Dominican-Americans in the Bronx, for example, might look different to fifth-generation Mexican-Americans in Arizona or Venezuelan-Americans in Florida. "I think the most important thing for people to understand is that there is no 'Latino vote,'" says political scientist Lisa García Bedolla. Some experts also question whether the current move toward the GOP represents an enduring shift or whether it's largely a function of Trump's unique influence. A widely predicted Latino surge toward Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms failed to materialize, with Latinos voting for Democrats over Republicans by 2 to 1. Whichever way the demographic leans in coming years, one thing remains indisputable for both parties, said Edward Vargas, professor of transborder studies at Arizona State University: "You can't win elections without Latinos." 

An evangelical influence 
While experts debate what's behind Latinos' turn to the right, one factor is clear: the growing influence of Latino evangelicals. The number of Hispanics who identify as Catholic dropped from 67 percent in 2010 to 43 percent in 2022, according to Pew Research Center; 21 percent now identify as Protestant, including 15 percent as evangelical Protestant. Those evangelicals are strong backers of Trump and other Republicans. "We want order, strength," said Camilo Perez, pastor of an evangelical church in the Las Vegas suburbs. "We try to separate politics and religion and the Bible and everything, but it is impossible." Such church leaders have great sway with their congregations, notes Dionny Báez, founder of the H20 Church in Miami. "There are literally thousands of people who are influenced by our word," he said. Galvanized by issues including policing, parental rights, abortion, and religious liberty, Latino evangelicals are "more involved than ever" in electoral matters, said Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "This year [they] are going to vote like no other year."

Trump world is aflame with a "patently absurd" claim of a deep state conspiracy to assassinate Donald Trump, said Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast. The latest "Big Lie" began last week when an FBI court document was unsealed and a MAGA gadfly tweeted a passage authorizing the agents who searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents in 2022 to use "deadly force" only if they were violently attacked. This "boilerplate" search-warrant language was actually intended to restrict the use of deadly force — the same words appeared in an FBI warrant to search President Biden's home. But the "irresponsible and dangerous" assertion that the FBI plotted to kill Trump "spread like wildfire" on the right. Trump said he'd "nearly escaped death" and that Biden "was locked & loaded and ready to take me out." Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said Biden "ordered the hit on Trump"; former Trump aide Steve Bannon called it "an attempted assassination." 

This manufactured plot shows us we're in a very real "crisis," said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. Trump just made the startling charge that the sitting president plotted to have his political opponent killed — a claim that will become "gospel" for Trumpists — and the response was a collective shrug. We've reached a point where one of our two major parties routinely peddles transparently nonsensical "propaganda," and "voters and our institutions accept it as a fact of life." This particular lie serves an ominous purpose, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. It "reinforces the creeping fascist belief on the right that American institutions have grown so sinister and corrupt" that an authoritarian like Trump is needed to restore order. And if the evil Left is plotting the murder of their Dear Leader, "the Right will need to support forms of ruthlessness that it hadn't previously condoned." 

In other words: violence, said Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic. The claim that Biden and the FBI are plotting to kill Trump legitimizes the use of force "by presenting it as a matter of self-defense." In a fundraising email, Trump wrote, "You know they're just itching to do the unthinkable." Don't dismiss that as Trump's "typical hyperbolic ranting." He's sending a "dangerous signal" to supporters — that Trump's enemies will do anything to take him out. "Unless, of course, Trump and his mob get to them first." 

Sophie Turner credits her daughters for showing her how to be courageous, said Chioma Nnadi in Vogue. The British Game of Thrones actress was 23 and on a retreat in Bali when she discovered she was pregnant with her oldest, Willa. She waited to tell her then-husband, pop star Joe Jonas, until she got back to Los Angeles. "I remember throwing the pregnancy test at him, saying, 'What do you think we should do?' When you're in your early 20s, life is so frivolous. But something changed that day. I just knew I had to have her."

Another daughter, Delphine, followed two years later, as did an acrimonious, very public divorce, and tabloid claims that she was out partying while Jonas stayed home with the girls. Turner, now 28, had previously been criticized for her weight and for being her husband's "groupie," but being mom-shamed was intolerable. "It felt like I was watching a movie of my life that I hadn't written, hadn't produced, or starred in. Some days I didn't know if I was going to make it." She moved back home to England to be with family and found that her girls were a prime motivation to keep her head up. "Once anyone says to me, 'Do it for your kids,' I'm doing it. I wouldn't do it for myself, but I'll find the strength for them."