San Diego's South Bay is a microcosm of how more of the Latino vote shifted to Trump
San Diego's South Bay is a microcosm of how more of the Latino vote shifted to Trump
Harris did not perform as well as Biden countywide, with the falloff even more pronounced in three Latino-majority cities and a neighborhood that borders Tijuana
San Diego County was emblematic of the whole U.S. in two notable ways on Election Day 2024:
Kamala Harris did not perform as well as Joe Biden did in 2020.
Donald Trump made significant inroads with Latino voters.
Harris has about 55% of the vote in San Diego County as of Nov. 7, with 500,000 ballots left to count, compared to Biden’s 60% four years ago. At 41.65%, Trump is about 4 percentage points ahead of his 2020 total.
As usual, Democrats across the board performed well throughout coastal San Diego County, while East County voted red. Trump also won the precincts in and around the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in North County, as expected.
But more alarming for Democrats, the slump was especially pronounced in four San Diego County communities with Latino-majority populations, underscoring an ongoing national trend that helped send Trump to the White House again.
In 2020, Biden had:
More than 70% of the vote in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego (population 27,846 / 93% Latino), located at the U.S. border with Tijuana.
Almost two-thirds in the city of Chula Vista (population 276,103 / 60% Latino).
Nearly 70% in National City (population 55,236 / 65% Latino).
Just under 60% in Imperial Beach (population 25,458 / 53% Latino).
Harris hasn’t cleared 60% in any of them as of now.
In 2020, Trump had:
40.8% of the vote in Imperial Beach.
No more than 34% in any of the other three, including just 29% in San Ysidro.
This year he is on pace to finish comfortably over 40% in each one.
Harris is hanging on to all four majorities — for now. Her lead in Imperial Beach is a tenuous 132 votes (Biden won there by almost 2,000 votes).
Here are a couple of quick charts that show how Trump ate into a once reliable Democratic demographic:
Throughout the U.S., an unprecedented 46% of Latinos turned out for Republicans, according to an exit poll, despite factors such as Trump’s racism, promises of mass deportation and, more recently, the Tony Hinchcliffe “island of garbage” joke at Madison Square Garden.
By comparison, Trump had only 28% of the Latino vote in his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, according to the Pew Research Center.
What I’ve been reading to try to understand it:
L.A. Times columnist Gustavo Arellano coined the term “rancho libertarian” to describe the ideology driving more Latinos to the political right.
Journalist Paula Ramos has been analyzing “the rise of the Latino far right.”
The BBC reported that the repeated Republican accusations of Democrats allowing an open southern border also resonated with some, even though the surge in illegal border crossings a) dates back to the final year of Trump’s first term and b) has been trending downward over the past several months due to Biden’s crackdown.
Visit the projects page on Mapping the Border for an interactive version of the map and set of donut graphs abovec that show the Democratic falloff in San Diego’s South Bay.