Noah Smith says the 2024 election narrowed Democrats’ advantage among Hispanic voters and raised questions about identity-based campaigning, though the result alone does not show that such appeals caused the shift.
In a Nov. 7, 2024, post on Noahpinion, Smith said Democrats remained ahead among Hispanic voters, but with a smaller advantage than in previous elections. He argued that campaigns directed at broad ethnic constituencies may not reliably retain those voters.
The exit-poll figures Smith cited, credited in his post to The Washington Post, showed Trump won a majority of Hispanic men. Smith also pointed to Jed Kolko’s analysis for Slow Boring, which found that places with larger Hispanic populations moved further toward Trump than other areas.
Smith placed those results within a wider class shift. He argued Republicans had made gains with working-class voters as Democrats became more closely associated with educated and affluent groups. He also said high-turnout elections may now favor Republicans because voters on the edge of participation, including Hispanic and working-class voters, lean right.
Smith added that Republican leaders may eventually recognize that making voting harder could hurt their own party, since he expected the effects to fall disproportionately on its voters. He presented his post as one lesson from an election with several possible explanations, rather than a complete account of why Donald Trump won.
A 2025 review by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) provides separate polling context. It found surveys gave Kamala Harris too much support among Hispanic voters and struggled to represent Republican voters in places that leaned Republican. The review said turnout assumptions explained a moderate share of the remaining error in the direction of the misses. EconoTimes previously summarized AAPOR’s findings on the 2024 polls.
