How Much of the Hispanic Vote Did Trump Really Get?

Late last week, the results of a Pew Research exit poll were released and trending on X. The Pew Research headline, "Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition," focuses on Trump's gains with diverse groups.

A particularly noteworthy takeaway is that he did so well with the Hispanic vote. Harris only won Hispanics by 51-48 percent for a +3 margin, and Trump even won Hispanic men by 50-48 percent. Harris won Hispanic women, but only by 52-46 percent. The Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 won Hispanic voters by 61-36 percent.

Fascinating data from Pew’s much-anticipated 2024 election study:

🗳️ Trump won a record-high 48% of the Hispanic vote

🇺🇸 Including 51% of foreign-born Hispanics — outperforming native-born

👤 He carried 50% of Latinos and 46% of Latinas pic.twitter.com/UZavk5M4jP

— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) June 26, 2025

Axios focused on Trump's performances for their write-up of the poll results, "Trump came close to winning Latino vote in '24 — Pew analysis," even as the write-up later goes on to claim Trump espoused "racist rhetoric."

From the start, there's a focus on how not only did Trump do better with Hispanics than previously thought, but that this challenges those who tried to downplay the severity of Trump's gains and Harris' losses:

Recommended

Is This the Idaho Firefighter Sniper? Matt Vespa

President Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2024 than previously believed and came within striking distance of capturing a historic majority of those voters, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the election results.

Why it matters: The analysis confirms what early exit polls hinted: Kamala Harris dramatically underperformed previous Democratic presidential candidates among Latinos, a rapidly growing and once-solidly Democratic voting bloc that has taken a big swing toward Republicans.

The big picture: Pew's analysis of election data shows that Trump won 48% of Latino voters — a group that had soundly rejected him in 2020 and 2016 — and that it was a crucial factor in his victory.

• The findings challenge claims by some left-leaning Hispanic political operatives that the early exit polls — which suggested Harris' percentage of the Latino vote was in the mid-50s, still a decline for a Democrat — were incorrect, and that her losses among Latinos were minimal.
• Pew says the exit polls were off, but that the results were even worse for Harris — 51% of the Latino vote.
• The new data also show that Trump rode back into office with a more ethnically and racially diverse coalition than previously known.

Trump also nearly doubled his support with black voters, going from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024. While Harris won Asian voters 57-40 percent, the Biden-Harris ticket won in 2020 by 70-30 percent.

The Pew Research analysis also highlights how turnout affected the 2024 election, which also speaks to other categories where Trump benefited [emphasis original]:

These shifts were largely the result of differences in which voters turned out in the 2020 and 2024 elections. As in the past, a relatively small share of voters switched which party’s candidate they supported.

In 2024, Trump benefited from higher turnout among those who voted for him in 2020. He also held an edge over Harris among voters who did not vote four years earlier – a group that was considerably more diverse than those who voted in both elections.

And while Trump improved his performance among several groups in 2024, many of the demographic patterns in voting preferences that have dominated American politics for the last several decades remained evident last November:

Educational divide. In each of his campaigns, Trump has held an edge among voters without four-year college degrees. But his 14-point advantage among noncollege voters (56% to 42%) was double his margin in 2016. Harris won voters with college degrees by 57% to 41%, but that was smaller than Biden’s lead among this group in 2020.

A wider urban-rural gap. Trump won voters living in rural areas by 40 points (69%-29%), which was higher than his margins in 2020 or 2016. Harris’ advantage among voters living in urban areas was nearly as large (65% voted for Harris, 33% Trump).

Continued differences by religious attendance. Nearly two-thirds of voters who attend religious services monthly or more (64%) voted for Trump, while only about a third (34%) supported Harris. Harris held a narrower advantage (56%-43%) among the larger group of voters who attend services less frequently.

From Biden 2020 to Trump 2024: A tale of differential turnout and changing voter preferences

While most of those who voted in 2020 cast ballots again in 2024, a larger share of Trump’s voters (89%) than Biden’s (85%) turned out.

And a larger share of those who did not turn out in 2020 – but did in 2024 – supported Trump (54%) than Harris (42%).

The poll results also continue to speak to voter turnout and how it would have affected Harris, or specifically, not affected her chances. While Democrats have touted benefiting from higher voter turnout, that's not the case here. "Harris would not necessarily have benefited from higher voter turnout," one section subheader read. In fact, Trump would have performed even better, given that 44 percent would have voted for him and 40 percent for Harris.

Not only is this an area where Trump improved, where the Biden-Harris ticket had the edge in 2020, but it goes back further than that. 

As Pew Research emphasized:

This is a stark contrast to 2020, when those who didn’t vote expressed a clear preference for Biden over Trump (46% to 35%). Democrats have held an edge among nonvoters in prior elections dating back to at least the 1960s – though there is some evidence this advantage had declined in recent elections.  

As a result, if all Americans eligible to vote in 2024 had cast ballots, the overall margin in the popular vote likely would not have been much different.

Sure enough, another way in which a Republican hasn't done so well since the 1960s is Trump's performance with Hispanic voters. "Trump's showing among Latinos was the best performance by a GOP presidential candidate in modern times, according to an Axios review of past elections dating back to 1960," Axios' write-up noted.

The Pew Research exit polls were conducted with 8,942 U.S. citizens from November 29-December 12, 2016; November 7-16, 2018; November 12-17, 2020; November 16-27, 2022; and November 12-17, 2024. There was a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

Is this a wake-up call for Harris, who may run for governor of California in 2026 or again for president in 2028? Absolutely, and for the party overall. "This is no longer a wake-up call" for Democrats. "This is a damn get-your-act-together call," Sisto Abeyta, described as "a New Mexico-based Democratic political consultant of the Nevada-based firm TriStrategies," is quoted as saying.

Speaking of Nevada, the Silver State voted for the Republican candidate for president in 2024 for the first time since 2004. Trump also performed much better in the state than polls predicted, winning with 50.6 percent of the vote.

It will be interesting to see how such findings affect the 2026 midterms. They're still over a year away, but Democrats so far don't look to be doing themselves any favors. And again, these results aren't exactly surprising, given the warning signs among Harris and Hispanics in polls leading up to the elections, and other post-election polls, as we've been covering. Plus, former President Barack Obama's efforts to try to bully black men into voting for Harris didn't exactly help.

Will Democrats have learned their lesson in time for next year? Time will tell.