Report: Latino voters aren’t just divided over support for Trump. They’re divided over identity

In 2024, Latino voters stunned the political world when nearly half of Latino voters backed President Donald Trump.

It was the largest share of the Latino vote any GOP candidate has gotten in modern times, according to Russell Contreras.

Contreras covers justice and race for Axios — and he joined The Show to talk more about a new Pew Research Center report that shows Latino voters aren’t just divided over their support for the president. They’re divided over what it means to be Latino — and whether they even call themselves Latino.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Russell. Thanks for coming back on The Show.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Good to be with you, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so it looks like this divide among Latino voters that we saw play out in the last election cycle goes a lot deeper than politics.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. It's not just about ideology, it's about how they define themselves in the United States and what labels they use to describe themselves. According to Pew, the majority of Latinos who backed Trump, about 57%, say ... what happens to be Latino in the United States, how that affects their lives, not much or not at all.

That's very contradictory to the 75% of Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, who say what happens to be Latino affects their lives a great deal. So even where they stand and how they are in their positionality of the United States, that reflects on how they vote.

So it's not just where they stand on, say, taxes or abortion. It's how they see themselves when they look in the mirror ... and when people ask them on the streets, "What are you? What's your ethnicity?" Very different views, and in those views, they come to different political conclusions.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, I think this really hit home for me reading this research when it talked about how Latinos identify themselves — like, what they even call themselves. Trump voters were much more likely to just refer to themselves as simply American, right?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. A vast majority of Trump voters say when they ask them, "What do you say?" they'll say, "Well, I consider myself American," just flat out American.

That's very different from, say, Harris voters, where they'll use a variety of terms. They'll say Latino, they'll say Hispanic, they'll say Mexican American, they'll say Central American. They are very fluid in their identity because the Democrats in general are a coalition party, and the Republicans are more homogeneous across the board.

So it's not surprising that when you ask Latino Trump voters how they see themselves, what terms they use, they'll come and say, "I'm an American." Because they see themselves as that. And as a community of Trump voters, that's what they embrace.

LAUREN GILGER: One thing everyone, it seems, to agree on, almost no one calls themselves Latinx, Latine, things like that?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Exactly. Only 1% according to this survey used the term Latinx. Only 1% used the new term Latine — that's the little "e" at the sign, that's what's getting popular in Latin America. So only 1%. And you will start to see those in nonprofits and progressive-leaning groups.

But if 1% are only using, it's started this conversation: Should we continue to use it? Because think about it, if I'm going — and I do this sometimes — if I'm going to northern New Mexico and I'm talking to Hispanic ranchers. These are guys in northern New Mexico, they're salt of the earth guys, they're driving trucks, they're tending horses, they're shooting elk. I'm not going to go up to them and say, "Hey brother, what do Latinx people think here?" They'll probably shoot me. [LAUGHS] They may be progressive on certain issues, but if I start with the term Latinx, right off the gate, they know that I'm not connected to them. I'm disconnected, I'm out of touch with their issues, and they'll say, "City boy, go back to where you came from."

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, I mean, are the parties, Russell, catching on to this? Like, are Democrats, for example, losing people with messaging right away by saying the wrong thing, using the wrong term?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's a good question. I know Ruben Gallego, when he was a congressman, before he became senator there in Arizona, banned his office from using Latinx, because he started looking at the polls and said, "This is no longer — this is not, we're not penetrating our constituents, and they're not learning, they're not even engaging with us."

So if I wanted to talk about environmental issues and say, "How are, say, smoke pollution from wildfires affecting your communities?" I'm not going to go and say, "How is the wildfires affecting you Latinx people?" Because they're going to turn you off right there. So you're not even engaging in where you wanted to go on poverty, on environmental.

So the terms that you use really define how you define the issues. So that's one way, but not all Democrats are doing that. The progressives seem to be very stubborn on this issue, especially on the East Coast, and that's creating a lot of tensions.

LAUREN GILGER: It's really interesting. One thing we should talk about here is the generational divide, like as in immigrant generation, right? Like you saw this very clearly in the Pew research, how recently someone has come to this country really impacts the way they view themselves.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: That's right. And you see a lot of that with the World Cup. You see a lot of folks rallying around Mexico. It depends on how generationally removed you are from the motherland, so to speak.

So for someone who's fourth or fifth generation, maybe not so much. It may be a sense of cultural pride. But for those who are first generation, second generation, you still refer to yourselves as, say, Mexican American, or say, Guatemalan American, or even use the term Guatemalan. Because they're not necessarily embracing the Americanness yet, and it takes time.

But once you're third-plus, fourth-plus, fifth-plus, that's where the identity kind of moves away because you're so far removed from there. In fact, you don't even — in some cases, like myself, can't even pronounce my last name correctly, according to some people.

So and that's going to affect how you see yourself, right? We kind of make fun of reporters who do this, especially Latino reporters, where you'll say your name a certain way when you're among friends, but when you get behind the camera, I'm like, "This is Russell Contreras from Axios." And you get clowned by your own family like, "You've never talked like that."

LAUREN GILGER: [LAUGHS\That's really interesting. So let me ask you before we let you go, Russell, about how the parties might use or maybe learn something from this research. Because, I mean, we really saw the GOP be successful with appealing to Latino voters last time around. And was it because they talked to them, you know, just about the same issues that everyone else talked about, like the economy, more than anything?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yeah, that's a good question. In our polling and in our reporting, we found two things: that when you ask Latino voters about Republicans, when you say, "What's the one thing that you find problematic?" They'll say, "Look, in my perspective, Republicans are racist."

And if you ask the question about Democrats, "What's the problem?" they say with them, they say, "They're condescending." So there's a big wash, right?

So that continued in the 2024 election where they felt both out of touch. So if you say, "OK, you're both out of touch, then what do you have for me? What can you provide me since both of you — I see both of you as problematic, or clowns," as one person told me. And so what Trump was able to do is, "I'm giving you an economic plan." And so they're going to vote with their wallets.

The same thing they could do with identity. If they're not investing enough ... sometimes they have discussions like, "My candidate is coming to Arizona. Should I play Selena or Bad Bunny to the intro music?" That's really sophomoric and kind of glances over the real problems. ... What you need to know is how does the community see themselves that you're engaging with, how do they refer to themselves and be authentic.

So if I'm going to, say, New Mexico, I know a lot of people there think they're Spanish, even though historically inaccurate, that's false. You may use the term Hispano and Hispanics. Same thing in South Texas.

But if I go to Arizona and California, they may say Latino, they may say Mexican American, you have to engage in them. Because if you don't do that, they're not going to listen to you for your other message, whether you want to talk about prescription drugs, or fighting the opioid crisis, or poverty. You can't get into the step — you can't even get into the step door if you don't even know how to ring the doorbell.

LAUREN GILGER: Super interesting stuff. All right, Russell Contreras joining us from Axios. He covers justice and race there. Russell, thank you so much for coming back on The Show, appreciate it.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Good to be with you.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created for audience accessibility. Transcripts are created on deadline with the assistance of AI tools and then edited, and may not be in their final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio segment.