On November 5th, America experienced a political earthquake. Former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris handily, defeating her in seven swing states (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan) and winning the national popular vote, a feat not achieved by a Republican candidate since George Bush in 2004. He made huge gains in reliably blue states, coming within a few points of flipping New Jersey and performing better in New York than Harris did in Florida, Iowa, or Texas. Immediately there was a scramble among the ruling class to determine how this happened. Some with clearer eyes like Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out that the Democratic Party offered little of substance to the working-class voters who used to make up its base. Indeed, Harris lost a huge amount of support among working class voters in this election. Another bellwether group among whom Democrats lost support are the topic of this essay: Hispanic Catholics.
The significant change in Hispanic support helped Trump carry Nevada, a state he didn’t win in 2016, fairly comfortably. In 2020, Biden carried Hispanic voters by 33 points nationwide, but Harris won them by only 6 points in a 52-46 split. Trump won Hispanic Men outright by 12 after Biden won them by 23 in 2020, a 35 point swing right. Many pundits and politicians seem completely stumped by this, relying on excuses like racism and sexism. Racism and sexism which apparently didn’t prevent these voters from heavily backing Obama twice and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
A partial explanation is the same economic condition which move working class Non-Hispanic Whites to the right: the economy is bad right now, especially for voters most affected by high prices at the grocery store. Hispanic people buy eggs and chicken too. But there was also undeniably a cultural aspect. For a long time, there was a racial in-group constraint in the Hispanic community regarding voting. This constraint has been under pressure lately, though. It showed a lot of cracks in 2020 when Trump improved margins significantly with Hispanics in certain states, largely Texas and Florida. But in this election, the dam finally burst. Miami went red, South Texas went red, and Nevada went red.
Why did this in-group consensus collapse? In part, voting patterns began to more accurately reflect beliefs. Among Pro-Life Hispanic voters, Biden fared surprisingly well, only losing the group 52-46 in 2020. In 2024, that group voted 90-9 for Trump. Harris improved her standing significantly with irreligious Hispanics, who shifted 29 points in her favor. But she lost 33 points with Hispanic Protestants and an astounding 50 points with Hispanic Catholics. This illustrates a larger shift in the parties: the Democrats are becoming the party of wealthy coastal elites who scorn religion, patriotism, and family while the Republicans are becoming the party of working-class American patriots who love God and family. Unfortunately for the coastal elites there are far more of the latter than there are of them.
This cultural dissonance between party elites and their voters in the Democratic Party has been visible for a while, but Democrats managed to cover it up by leaning into bread-and-butter issues and trying to be reasonable with voters on social liberalism. But the Harris Campaign did neither of those things. They denied the economy was struggling, enraging working-class Americans, and they were stalked relentlessly by ads of Harris’ own insane social positions from her 2020 run. Her extreme positions included legalizing illegal immigration, no limits on abortion, and taxpayer funded sex changes for convicted murderers and illegal aliens. These are not popular positions with anyone other than the coastal liberals. They drive home how insanely out of touch the party truly is from most Americans. In a perfect illustration of this, Representative Seth Moulton suggested that perhaps the party needed to moderate a bit on social issues such as the question of transgender athletes in women’s sports, and within a day, a mob of hyper liberal students were screaming outside his office in Salem demanding his resignation.
The Democratic Party appears to have underestimated dramatically just how off-putting and even offensive their platform would be to the people who they wanted as foot soldiers. I can think of no greater example of this than religion. Catholic Americans moved 23 points to the right in this election, and it should be self-evident why. Liberals simply ooze contempt and hatred for the Catholic faith at a level which is astonishing. They feel quite free to say the most horrific things about Catholics, their church, their priests, and their beliefs; they would never dream of saying even a fraction even of these things about Islam or Judaism. One of Harris’ top surrogates in Michigan made videos mocking the Holy Eucharist. Liberal plans for a permanent majority have blown up in their face because they simply can’t help but be incredibly hateful to most Americans. They can’t help but mock God, insult the working class, and threaten to deport the family members of Hispanic Americans who voted for Trump.
They also don’t have any vision which is exciting to anyone. Young Hispanic Men handed Trump the Southwestern swing states in part because he and the right wing more generally has given them a place in the movement to make a glorious future for themselves. The left scolds young men for simply being born male. Is it truly any wonder that the sons of Cristeros and of Conquistadors are much happier to join in a grand crusade to build up the nation than to join an amorphous blob under the command of people who openly hate their Lord and the nation which has given them so much?
For those on the left chanting “Demographics is destiny” since 2008, it’s over. You’ve lost. For decades the left has been saying that if working class people realized they had more in common with each other than with elites, politics would change dramatically, and it did. But it led to them coalescing in the Republican Party. We go to Mass, we care for our families, and we work hard, often for subpar pay for people who don’t appreciate it. And the out of touch liberals, whose superfluous life of ordering DoorDash and video conferencing from their luxury apartments is made possible only by our tireless and thankless efforts, call us Nazis because they cannot understand our devotion to our God and our families.
A century ago, these same sort of liberals tried to wipe out the Catholic faith in Mexico. But brave men, Cristeros, rose in defense of their Lord. Today, our job is the same. And like the Cristeros of old, we shall triumph, “for God is with us!”