Donald Trump’s growing support among Latino voters helped him clinch battleground Pennsylvania

HAZLETON — Sitting on a stoop with friends along this city’s North Wyoming Street corridor Wednesday morning, Carlos Pagan, 73, said he voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, but described his mood as being contento, the Spanish word for glad.

Pagan, a registered Democrat who is Puerto Rican and Dominican, lamented his support for Harris.

“That was a mistake of mine,” he said. “The country would have gone backward.”

For Pagan and many others in Hazleton, where former President Donald Trump won by 25 percentage points, the cost of food, gas, and rent topped the list for why they support the former president — even some who didn’t wind up voting for him.

Many Latino voters in Pennsylvania set aside Trump’s incendiary rhetoric against their community or their disdain for his personality, in favor of the GOP candidate’s promises on the economy. Their support was a cocktail of enthusiasm and hesitancy that helped push him over the top in the battleground state.

Others who backed Harris expressed dismay the day after the election at Latino support for a candidate who has platformed disparaging remarks against their community.

“I just don’t understand how Latinos voted for him,” said Frank Morales, 61, of Norris Square in Philadelphia — particularly after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe had likened Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage” during Trump’s rally last month at Madison Square Garden.

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns understood the importance of catering to Pennsylvania’s more than 600,000 eligible Latino voters in the lead-up to Nov. 5. The day before the election, Trump and Harris converged on Reading — Pennsylvania’s city with the most Latino residents. Trump held a rally at the Santander Arena while Harris stopped at a local Puerto Rican restaurant with U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The Trump campaign opened outreach offices in communities of color, celebrated endorsements from Puerto Rican musicians, and hosted events catered toward Latino men. The Harris campaign sent surrogates to events and venues in majority-Latino areas and reached out to voters in Spanish in person and on the air. Democrats had been hopeful that Hinchcliffe’s racist comment would provide an 11th-hour boost for their party.

Trump has categorized Latinos as criminals, saying that Mexico was “not sending their best,” and instead exported “rapists,” and frequently vilified immigrants during his rallies. Yet his candidacy resonated more with Latino voters now than in years past — particularly Latino men.

Republican State Sen. Dave Argall, whose district includes Hazleton, said Trump’s gains in this Luzerne County city were a result of community building begun even before Trump narrowly won the area in 2020. Argall wasn’t surprised to hear about the calculation some Latino voters made, reconciling at times dispiriting remarks about them and the idea that Trump could shape a better economy.

”It’s not just Hispanic voters,” he said. “I think that’s true across the gamut.”

Hispanic voters in particular are more likely than other demographics to say the economy is their most important issue, which boded favorably for Trump, the Economist reported. And Pennsylvania’s uneven economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic was poised to help Trump, who has capitalized on U.S. inflation and the rising prices of goods.

In the 114 majority-Latino precincts in Philadelphia, Trump’s share of the vote in the past three elections grew from 6.1% in 2016 to 15.3% in 2020 to 21.8% in 2024.

On an abnormally warm November morning in Centro de Oro, a heavily Latino neighborhood in North Philly, voters offered conflicting feelings about Trump’s Pennsylvania victory, acknowledging that some of these mixed feelings divided families.

Rafael Seda, 61, said he and his wife voted for Harris but that he was shocked to see how many fellow Latino voters cast their ballots for Trump, including his 23-year-old son. Seda tried to persuade his son to vote for the Democrat. But ultimately, Seda’s son chose Trump because of his economic promises.

Luz Perez, 25, voted for Trump, but offered there were positives and negatives to both candidates, and acknowledged the split in the Fairhill neighborhood.

“Everybody is confused and upset, and then some people are happy. It’s like mixed emotions everywhere,” she said.

Jose Feliciano, 55, is Puerto Rican, and said that he was not surprised that so many Latinos had voted for Trump. He said he found that support appalling.

“He says it out loud — he doesn’t want no Hispanics, he wants all the Hispanics to go back to Puerto Rico,” Feliciano said.

Feliciano has noticed mixed emotions around the neighborhood with Trump’s victory, but was clear about his own feelings.

“We have no future with this man,” he said " because he’s not out to help us.”

Staff writer Chris A. Williams contributed to this article.