In recent elections, some Latino voters turned away from the Republican Party. These votes helped flip seats in Virginia and could be an important factor in next year’s midterm elections.
Mary Louise Kelly, host:
Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger isn’t the only Democrat to flip her seat in Virginia’s election this year. Democrats also won other local elections, including by large margins in areas with large numbers of Latino voters. Now, that’s a big change from the 2024 presidential election, when those same parts of Virginia shifted slightly toward Republicans. Margaret Barthel of member station WAMU talks about the reason behind those variable margins.
MARGARET BARTHEL, BYLINE: Virginia’s House of Delegates District 22 is about an hour west of D.C., where suburban urban sprawl gives way to farms. It is a political battleground. President Trump won it in 2016 and lost it to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024 by approximately one point.
But last month, the margin between the political parties looked different. Delegate-elect Elizabeth Guzman, a Democrat, won the seat by 10 percentage points, unseating Republican incumbent Ian Lovejoy, a moderate conservative. Guzman believes part of the reason she won is that Latino voters in the district — some of whom supported President Trump just last year — are now wary of giving their votes to a GOP nominee again. That’s something I heard knocking on the door.
ELIZABETH GUZMAN: First thing, they’ll look at me, are you a Republican or a Democrat? I said: I am a Democrat. Well, because we don’t want to vote for more Republicans anymore. They betrayed us and we are not happy.
BARTHEL: Data shows that 14% of the population here identifies as Hispanic. The shifting opinion Guzman heard on the campaign trail mirrors what happened in other major races in November, and comes at a time when 70% of Latinos disapprove of the job Trump is doing. This is according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Foundation.
GUZMAN: No. 1, we’re under attack here.
BARTHEL: Guzman, a social worker in her day job, says the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement is causing widespread fear where she lives, including in her family. She said she made sure her children had Real IDs to prove they were citizens if they were stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She says Republicans ignore these concerns at their peril.
Guzman: Our president is hurting the country and hurting us. None of them wanted to admit it.
BARTHEL: In neighboring Loudoun County, voter Jose Ramiro Cruz has similar concerns.
José Ramiro Cruz: I’m really bothered by the labeling that we Latinos have been given to being criminals or uneducated, etc.
BARTHEL: Cruz said he volunteered this year for Democrats because he was angry with Republicans over that speech. He is also concerned about the economy. Marvin Hernandez ran the Virginia campaign for CASA in Action, a national progressive political group organizing black and Latino voters.
Marvin Hernandez: We’ve had some voters who said, they said – right? -I voted for Trump because I thought the economy would improve. But this has not changed.
BARTHEL: Hernandez said CASA in Action and other Democratic-aligned groups capitalized on voters’ frustration with Trump, spending money on Spanish-language ads. Srilekha Bali, a conservative political consultant in Northern Virginia, admits the investment has paid off.
Srilekha Pal: I think what the Democrats do well is they’ll go on Telemundo, for example, and announce as if there’s no other day. Republicans won’t even have a single ad there.
BARTHEL: She says her party missed an opportunity to emphasize Virginia’s economic strength under a Republican governor. Sam Shirazi, a political analyst in Virginia, points out that Democrats’ focus on affordability as the core of their campaign comes just a year after Republicans did the same thing to win the presidential race.
Sam Shirazi: We’re kind of entering into an era where some of these voters may be swinging back and forth, and they’re not necessarily loyal to either party.
BARTHEL: But for now, Shirazi said the leftward swing among Latino voters in Virginia is a warning sign for Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.
For NPR News, I’m Margaret Barthel in Arlington, Virginia.
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