Exits polls published by CNN suggest that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did better among Latino voters than his party’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney. Trump lost the Latino vote to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by a 29 percent-65 percent margin. That is significantly better than Romney did when he lost that demographic group to President Obama by a 27 percent-71 percent margin.
Trump was expected to do poorly among Latinos. He not only opposed immigration reform but promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. He was widely criticized for his rhetoric on the issue, stating, for example, at his campaign launch that “rapists” were immigrating from Mexico. Liberal leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka denounced him as a racist. Romney eschewed such rhetoric though he also opposed immigration reform, calling for illegal immigrants to “self-deport.”
The results of the election left pro-immigration advocates stunned. “Wild swing of emotions. I’m in. This is my America, too. If we have to convince everyone else that #immigration is going to be ok, i am in,” tweeted Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum Action Fund.
Democrats expected that Trump’s actions would boost their already strong margins among that demographic group. “Latino voters will have a powerful impact on this election — and are already showing record turnout,” Hillary Clinton tweeted Monday.
If the exit poll numbers hold, Trump will have pulled off an astounding feat: improving the GOP’s margin among Hispanic voters while doing virtually everything conventional political wisdom says would repel them.
