Commentary: What's missing from the Latino vote debate? The voice of Latinas

Postelection analyses continue to ignore the political and economic power of Latinas. The big story about the Latino vote is that the electoral bets the Trump and Harris campaigns made to galvanize men of color paid off for MAGA extremists. But both candidates’ willful neglect of Latina voters is another threat to American democracy.

Many are saying this election was a referendum on the economy and needs of working-class voters. Where do Latinas fit into that story?

Latinas made up about 12% of all registered female voters in 2024. They constituted more than 20% of registered voters in five important states: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Despite being the nation’s most underpaid demographic group, in 2021 Latinas contributed $1.3 trillion to the nation’s gross domestic product, an amount larger than the economy of Florida. This year they headed to the ballot box with their wallets, livelihoods and futures on the line. And they did not back the GOP: Exit polls estimate that 3 in 5 Latina voters supported Vice President Kamala Harris. For the third time they rejected MAGA extremism in the face of majority support for the Trump ticket by non-Hispanic white voters, both men and women.

Yet the 2024 election did show that the significant shifts toward former President Trump included Latinos. The polls indicate that a majority of Latino men supported the Republican presidential ticket for the first time since data on Latino voters have been collected, and the share of Latina voters supporting the Democratic ticket has narrowed over the last three cycles with Trump as the Republican nominee.

Messaging around the economy has been deemed the real takeaway from this election cycle. Yet neither party offered voters a comprehensive approach or addressed the issues of most concern to Latinos.

Both campaigns failed to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession, both of which annihilated Latino households in terms of their health and wealth. Latinos were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, causing many to exit the workforce to care for their families less than a decade after their demographic lost 66% of their wealth in the housing crisis. Worse, neither campaign’s economic messaging spoke to Latinas. At the 11th hour, the Harris campaign rolled out an“opportunity agenda” for Latino men with no equivalent for Latinas.

Electoral postmortems have reinforced the invisibility of Latina voters and their contributions to the American economy. Their economic grievances, like those of men of color, are well-founded even if they did not react to them by voting for Trump.

Our recent report at Latina Futures 2050 Lab reveals a troubling disparity in hourly wages, placing Latinas at the bottom of the earnings spectrum in America. To achieve the weekly earnings of non-Hispanic white men, Latinas have to work 64 hours — 24 beyond the typical workweek. Rather than shrinking with educational attainment, the wage gap with white men in fact widens among the college-educated. Research suggests that for Latinas who enter the workforce today, the wage disparity amounts to more than $1.2 million over the 40 years of a typical career.

Latinas are also now more likely than Latino men to be their households’ breadwinners, partly as a result of their higher educational attainment. Their households are often multi-generational, including spouses, children and elderly family members, creating a heavier financial burden with each additional dependent. In the face of inflation and rising inequality, Latinas’ earnings have been insufficient to survive, let alone thrive.

The economy consistently ranks as a top issue for Latinas, with two-thirds identifying the wage gap as a big problem in a Pew survey this year. So why did the majority still support the Democratic ticket this election? And why is there a large well-documented gender gap for Gen Z between young Latina voters, who overwhelmingly backed Harris, and their male peers, who supported Trump?

Perhaps women also prioritized issues such as democracy and abortion, which mattered far more to Harris voters. And Trump’s repeated invitations this cycle to men of color to join the MAGA movement catapulted his misogyny — pledges to“protect women” whether they “like it or not”— to new, persuadable audiences. Whatever the reasons, Latino men’s support for Trump seemed to overcome their party affiliation— most lean Democrat— and down-ballot choices, with Democratic Senate wins in Arizona and Nevada.

The GOP’s uniform control of the Oval Office, Senate and House of Representatives come January confirms that voters believe they were better off four years ago than they are now. Yet Democrats must not heed calls to pander selectively to Latino men. Instead they must also meaningfully engage Latina voters, who have higher electoral participation rates and preferences for the Democratic ticket than their male peers.

If candidates and parties continue to overlook the economic needs of Latina voters, they risk alienating one of America’s most influential blocs. According to data from the National Women’s Law Center and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Georgia, a swing state, ranks 45th in the nation for wage equity among Latinas; Texas and California, where Latinos are the plurality population, rank 48th and 50th respectively (despite the latter’s reputation as a progressive stronghold).

In the Golden State and elsewhere, Latinas will not wait quietly for change. They want to see economic justice delivered, not deferred.

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Sonja Diaz is a civil rights attorney and co-founder of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab.