Ace Acosta, who, on top of his job as a food manager, has spent years organizing for Democratic candidates, wasn’t surprised former President Donald Trump won over more Nevada Latinos this time around. 

While knocking on doors throughout Las Vegas, the 29-year-old noticed that Latinos, especially younger ones, seemed to be hit especially hard by rising inflation and housing costs. Even though an average of polls in the final three weeks before the election showed Vice President Kamala Harris had a narrow lead in Nevada, Acosta had an inkling that Trump was going to win. 

“The main issue is always the economy,” Acosta said.  

Polls just before and on Election Day indicate that the group made a significant rightward shift this election, following a broader national trend. The 2024 American Electorate Poll of Hispanic Voters commissioned by UnidosUS, which surveyed more than 300 Nevadan Latino voters in English and Spanish, found that Harris trailed President Joe Biden’s level of 2020 support with the group by 6 percentage points, even though she led by a 2-to-1 margin.

Trump, meanwhile, made resounding gains according to most polling. In 2020, 70 percent of Latino voters in Nevada voted for Biden, while only 27 percent backed Trump, according to the UnidosUS poll. In 2024, 64 percent supported Harris against the 35 percent of Nevada Latinos that backed Trump. 

The national exit poll even showed Trump winning over Harris among Latino voters, although exit polling’s accuracy has also been disputed because the data is self-reported and often captures a small set of voters. A more accurate picture is expected later from precinct-level analyses that consider actual votes cast and the demographics of precincts. 

Inflation, concern about border security and unfocused Democratic messaging all contributed to Trump’s increasing success with Nevada Latinos, according to more than half a dozen political consultants and Latino community leaders who spoke to The Nevada Independent. They said that, like other demographic groups, many Latinos have become dissatisfied with a political establishment that has seemingly made little progress on ensuring economic security and reforming the immigration system.

In the months leading up to the race, both parties ramped up efforts to court Latino voters, which make up about 20 percent of Nevada’s registered electorate and about half of which are not members of either major party.

Still, some pollsters contend that Latino voters were not the difference-makers in Trump’s victory — mainly because the group continued to be under-mobilized. In Nevada, 65 percent of Latino voters would have needed to vote blue in order to flip the state for Harris, but only 48 percent actually did, according to a UnidosUs’ assessment of exit polling. 

”In past cycles, Latino voters were able to offset white majorities, but in this cycle, turnout differentials and sizable white majority were insurmountable,” said UnidosUS Vice President of the Latino Vote Initiative Clarissa Martínez de Castro.  

UnidosUS’ survey, which polled some 3,750 voters across battleground states in the days before Election Day, was one of the largest polls of Latino constituents nationwide with a margin of error of +/-1.01 percent. 

The economy

Throughout the 2024 campaign, polling indicated time and time again that the economy was top of mind among Latino voters who, like other groups, felt the rising cost of living and prioritized that over other key issues such as immigration. Overwhelmingly, Americans were dissatisfied with Biden’s handling of the economy.

“The most potent driver in the election was economic discontent, expressed in Trump's gains with most demographics,” Martínez de Castro said about the national Latino vote.  

The rising cost of living has been especially pronounced in Nevada, which has lagged behind the rest of the U.S. economy in its post-pandemic recovery. Nevadans on average are paying $1,195 more per month for the same goods and services as in January 2021  — higher than the national average — and housing costs have exploded, rising nearly 57 percent since the start of the pandemic.

Jesus Marquez, a longtime Nevada-based conservative political consultant and former Trump appointee, contends that Harris failed to truly tackle Latino voters’ economic concerns. Her no-taxes-on-tips proposal was borrowed from Trump (the president-elect said he first got the idea in Vegas) and despite her promise to lower inflation, polling signaled that Harris struggled to break free from being associated with the rising costs under the Biden administration.

“Prices are still up in the sky … Latinos, Hispanic families, they're losing the American dream because of that,” Marquez said.

Eddie Diaz, strategic director for The LIBRE Initiative in Nevada, an arm of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, said that the multigenerational aspect of Latino homes added an additional complication to Latinos’ economic situations. One household he knows, he said, has three families living in it. 

Diaz contends that Latino men’s pronounced support for Trump, who are traditional familial breadwinners, can be explained by economic concerns. The Unidos pre-election poll showed 42 percent of Latino men in Nevada supported Trump and exit polls pegged that number at 60 percent — an uptick from 2020 in both surveys. 

“I grew up in a household where men — my uncles, my grandparents, my father — took pride in taking care of their family and providing,” Diaz said. “When they're having a hard time where they have to go out and grab another job, they have their kids working or their wife, so they took notice of that, right? They want a better economy.”

Even more left-leaning community leaders remain disappointed by Democrats’ economic messaging. Rudy Zamora, an organizer with Chicanos Por La Causa, said that while he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why more Latinos supported Republican candidates this year, he feels that Latinos are often pigeonholed as a “single-issue community” that only cares about immigration.

“As a young person with a family, I'm still trying to buy a house. Houses are still not affordable,” Zamora said.

Latinos and ‘America First’ 

It wasn’t just the economy, but also the Trump campaign incorporating Latinos into the idea of an “America First” movement that was instrumental in growing conservative Latino support, right-leaning political analysts say.

“We went on with the message of America first, meaning we care for you — for Hispanics — the policies of getting back our economy and lowering the price of everything,” Marquez said.

A part of this was tapping into fears about border security. A big misstep of the Harris campaign, according to Israel Ortega, deputy communications director for Libre Initiative, was her failure to take a clear stance on immigration and border reform.

During the Biden administration, the U.S.-Mexico border saw a record number of migrant encounters as President Joe Biden took steps to boost refugee admissions and provide deportation relief. For the many Latinos who are legal U.S. residents, it felt that these new immigrants were sidestepping the legal immigration process, Ortega contends. 

“​​Immigrants recognize the value of immigration, but just as important, Latinos value order, and knowing who's coming in and who's coming out,” Ortega said. 

Still, a mass deportation campaign —  which Trump has repeatedly promised to conduct — could have a major impact in Nevada, which has the largest per-capita undocumented population of any state. 

Nearly 34 percent of the state’s Latinos said their principal motivation to vote this year was Trump’s mass deportation policy, the UnidosUS poll found, although it did not say how many of that group supported or opposed the policy. 

An October poll from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy also found that Nevadans favor expanding pathways to legal citizenship over a mass deportation campaign by a margin of more than 2 to 1. 

Mobilization

Organizations such as Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and AFL-CIO, which have a large Latino constituency, have historically played a large role in the “Reid Machine” — the political operation built by the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) that has helped propel Nevada’s Democratic majorities. 

With more than  half of the Culinary Union’s membership being Hispanic, the makeup of the Reid Machine could explain why, historically, Latino voters in Nevada are contacted significantly more by Democrats than Republicans. This election cycle, 45 percent of Latinos surveyed by the UnidosUS poll said they were contacted by Democrats, versus the 30 percent contacted by Republicans. 

But this time around, conservatives borrowed some tricks from the Democrats in courting Latinos, something that was potentially key in increasing support. 

"We went back to one recipe — that is the Democratic recipe,” said Marquez. 

Marquez’s own organization, the American Christian Caucus — focused on “promoting conservative Christian values in Nevada” — tapped into community organizations such as Hispanic churches to begin their get out to vote campaign and recruit canvassing volunteers, knocking on thousands of doors, he said. 

Meanwhile, other groups such as the Elon Musk-backed America PAC and Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown’s campaign also upped their ground game. Although The LIBRE Initiative did not endorse a specific presidential candidate, it launched an “anti-Bidenomics” campaign and backed Brown.

Republican outreach to Latinos has significantly increased as the state has become more competitive. In 2016, only 11 percent of Latinos were contacted by Republicans and only 18 percent voted for Trump, according to a 2020 UnidosUS poll. Meanwhile, that survey found that 35 percent were contacted by Democrats that year. 

Still, beyond the 2024 presidential race, the Democrats behind the Reid Machine are happy with its downballot successes, suggesting it still has a lead in mobilizing Latinos. 

Nonpartisan Chicanos Por La Causa took advantage of digital platforms in mobilizing Latinos in addition to the traditional ground game in its get out the vote efforts. Although they didn’t endorse a specific candidate, they endorsed Question 6, which enshrines the right to an abortion in the state Constitution, and were against Question 3, which would’ve opened primaries but ultimately failed. 

“Now with the younger generations, we're also having to meet them at where they are, which is online, which is Instagram, TikTok,” Zamora said. 

Fears about a Trump presidency

Still, for many of the Nevada Latinos who didn’t vote for Trump, the future is filled with uncertainty and worry. 

Jessica Soria, a 39-year-old researcher and consultant, said that she worries Trump’s election will embolden machismo and colorism within the Latino community, which especially concerns her as the parent of a young son and daughter. She’s concerned that in the future, her daughter, who is darker-skinned, will face discrimination as a result of her color. 

“[Trump] gives permission for others to act in racism and hatred, because he moves in those ways,” Soria said. 

In the days following the election, Soria noticed a flurry of racist text messages circulating around social media and Latino family members disparaging Harris for her race and gender —  something that felt like a harbinger. It was “so painful for me,” Soria said.

Soria isn’t alone in her worries. In Nevada, only 30 percent of Latinos believe that Republicans  “care a great deal” about Latinos, while more than 60 percent believe the same thing about Democrats, according to the UnidosUS poll. 

For Acosta, the Democratic organizer, it's not the Trump presidency that worries him the most, but rather Republican control of both the Senate and the House, which makes it more likely that some conservative anti-immigration policies will be passed. 

“They're gonna actually try to get to him to actually follow through on his rhetoric,” Acosta said. 

But despite Republican gains, Diaz is not so certain that Latinos’ rightward shift is a set trend. 

As the new administration kicks off in 2025, Diaz says that the LIBRE Initiative will continue to keep an eye on Republicans’ economic policies; the group wants to extend key provisions of the Tax Jobs and Cuts Act of 2017 that are set to expire, such as cuts to individual income tax rates. 

Meanwhile, in Nevada, the LIBRE Initiative plans on doing some lobbying in the upcoming legislative session. 

“Latinos, they're willing to vote for a different party, but now Republicans have to follow through,” Diaz said.