When researchers at Equis, which tracks Latino voters’ attitudes and voting behavior in the US, saw that young Latinas in Texas had a higher turnout than young white women during the latest midterm elections, they were shocked.
Then, they looked at Georgia. It happened there too.
“We felt like we had to read the data three times before we believed it”, said Maria Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez, research director for Equis. “In previous elections we would have expected the reverse.”
For Di Franco, young Latino voters “really drove the turnout surge in Texas and beyond” and helped push the Democrat’s blue tsunami to historic levels.
As experts dive into the numbers, Latinos emerged as a true swing group where, in this latest cycle, significant numbers of new or infrequent voters were highly mobilized. Younger voters in particular came out to strongly reject Trump’s policies on the economy, the war and ICE violence.
Young Latinas in particular, says Di Franco, focused on ICE.
This interview has been edited for clarity and flow.
Is it that Latino voters switched back to Democrats during this cycle, or did new voters with different views turn out?
To see the kind of swing we saw among Hispanic voters last week, there had to be a combination of both. Some voters who supported Trump and Republicans in 2024 decided over the last two years to switch back to Democrats. In our polling leading up to the election, about three-quarters of Trump supporters told us they would stick with Republicans in November, and we saw that play out last week.
Across the major estimates, whether from The New York Times, the voter poll or AP-NORC, we saw an increase of 8 to 13 percentage points in support for Democrats among Latino voters.
The best look we have right now is in Georgia and Texas, where individual-level turnout records were available last week. In Georgia, 52% of Latino voters were new or infrequent voters. In Texas, it was 48%. These were people who sat out 2024, including some who also sat out 2022.
What did you see among young voters in Texas?
Young Latino voters really drove the turnout surge in Texas and beyond. In Texas, about 25% of Latinas ages 18 to 29 voted in the 2022 midterms. That rose to 41% this year, a 16-point increase. Turnout among young Latino men also rose, from 18% to 25%, a seven-point increase.
For the first time since we started doing this kind of analysis, we saw the turnout gap between young Latina and white women reverse. Across the organization, we felt like we had to read the data three times before we believed it. In both Texas and Georgia, young Latinas turned out at higher rates than young white women. Georgia was the starkest example. Turnout among young Latinas was 45%, compared with 33% among young white women.
What do we know about what motivated these young voters?
Over the past two years, young Hispanic voters expressed even higher levels of frustration with Trump and Republicans than Hispanic voters overall. That frustration translated into a much bigger swing in who they supported. Averaging the three major estimates, Democratic support among Latino voters ages 18 to 29 went from 57% in 2024 to 79% this year.
Even when immigration enforcement slipped as a priority relative to the economy, the cost of living, the war in Iran and other issues, it never dropped for young Latinas. In every wave we polled, they were the most likely to name immigration enforcement overreach as a top concern.
How much of that turnout came from campaign outreach, and how much came from voters’ own reactions to what was happening?
It was a combination. Some of the movement we saw among young Hispanic voters was happening before campaign communications began. That was especially noticeable among the youngest Hispanic voters, who were the most likely to take a chance on Trump in 2024 and then the most likely to swing against him over the next two years.
Campaign outreach mattered, too. In Texas, Talarico and Hinojosa and their allies made reaching Hispanic voters a priority, in Spanish and in English. Early in the cycle, Texas’ 15th Congressional District looked very difficult to flip after Republicans redrew the lines. The swing there was massive, and Bobby Pulido won. That race shows why the substance of the communication matters alongside the investment. Pulido could deliver those messages in his own voice.
More than in previous elections, we saw Democrats consistently center the cost of living in their campaign communications.
What happened in Florida?
We compare results in heavily Hispanic precincts with results in those same precincts in earlier elections. In Miami-Dade, Orange and Osceola counties, and elsewhere in Florida, the Republican gains of the last few cycles were essentially cut in half. Angie Nixon, who lost her U.S. Senate race, drew support in those precincts close to what Democrats saw in 2020. Democrats’ previous high point in Florida was in 2016, and they didn’t get back to that level. In Texas, Democratic support returned to its previous high point of 2018.
Did you see any differences in turnout in places where ICE conducted major operations? Did fear keep people from voting?
We haven’t yet analyzed turnout or support specifically in the places with the most ICE activity. Overall, Latino turnout surged despite whatever fear people may have felt. I also think that surge reflected a deep rejection of the excessive and violent immigration enforcement people had been seeing over the last two years.
What about states such as Michigan and Kansas? Do we know what role Latino voters played there or elsewhere in the Midwest?
We haven’t done much analysis in Michigan or Kansas yet. But in heavily Hispanic precincts in places like Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the gains Trump and Republicans made over the last few cycles were nearly erased. In the areas we analyzed in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Democratic support in heavily Latino precincts came close to its 2018 peak.
A lot of people are talking about Latinos as swing voters. What will determine where they go next?
What was clear in 2024 and 2026 was that Latino voters are willing to hold whoever is in power accountable for delivering on their promises. In 2024, they held the Biden administration and Democrats accountable for what they saw as economic and immigration crises, and for what they felt was too much investment abroad.
Trump promised to lower the cost of living, get immigration under control and put America first. Latino voters gave him credit for what he did at the border, but what I’d call his overreach on interior enforcement made immigration a weak point for him. He didn’t lower the cost of living. Just as Biden and Democrats paid a political price over the war in Ukraine, Trump and the Republicans who backed him paid a price over the war in Iran.
Democrats are about to regain a meaningful amount of governing power. They spent the last two years saying they would focus on the cost of living, bring down health care costs and address the day-to-day expenses that are making life so difficult for voters. Now they’ll need to show through action in the House and Senate that those are their priorities. We’ll see how that plays out in 2028.
ACoM Associate Editor Pilar Marrero covers immigration and issues impacting the US Latino community. She is the author of “Killing the American Dream” and “El Despertar del Sueño Americano” (Waking UP From the American Dream.”
