President Donald Trump last week spoke candidly about his popularity with Hispanic voters in the 2020 presidential election. “I think they know that I love them,” President Trump said. “I have great respect for them.”
“They also know I’m tough on the border, and tough on immigration…A lot of people thought I was going to hurt myself with the Hispanics on my tough stance on the border. No, they don’t want people coming in, taking their jobs, taking their house,” Trump added in an exclusive interview last week with Real Clear Politics.
In November 2020, exit polls on election day in some of the biggest battleground states showed that President Trump was right. He handily polled 14 points higher with Hispanic voters in 2020 than in 2016.
According to a Pew Research Center study, Trump also won 41 percent of non-college-educated Hispanic voters in 2020, which was also a considerable gain from the 2016 presidential race.
Regarding immigration policy, which is a very important topic among Hispanic voters, Trump previously warned Americans that Joe Biden had thrown the border wide open. “This is an invasion,” he stated during a rally in Perry, Ga., in September. He added, “The world is coming into our country. They’re emptying their prisons into our country.”
When asked how he thought Joe Biden was handling the situation at the southern border, Trump replied that it was “the most incompetent thing I’ve ever seen…until I saw the Afghan withdrawal.”
President Trump’s strong rhetoric regarding illegal immigration actually appears to have boosted him favorably among Hispanics across the country. In Florida, for example, Trump won 45 percent of the Hispanic vote, and he increased his vote percentage by 26.8 percent in 17 Texas counties. He also said that Hispanic voters understood that he was doing the “right” thing in terms of protecting their lives and their jobs.
President Trump in 2020 pioneered the American Dream Plan to invest in Hispanic communities by creating jobs, supporting businesses, increasing scholarships for Hispanic students, and more.
In the event of a potential 2024 presidential bid to take back the White House, Trump’s popularity with Hispanics in America will undoubtedly be a very important factor.