Latino voters transformed American politics Tuesday night — yet again.

In Texas and Kansas, Colorado and California, Latinos voted for Democrats in huge numbers, helping determine control of both the House and Senate just two years after they had flocked to Republicans and propelled Donald Trump back to the White House.

Hispanic lawmakers will make up roughly a fifth of the Democratic majority in the House, a record. And for the first time in modern history, California and Texas, the two largest states in the country, will be led by Latino governors — both Democrats.

It was an unraveling of the multiracial coalition that Republicans celebrated in 2024. Just last year, Republicans were so confident that their gains with Hispanic voters promised a new era that they gerrymandered five districts in Texas with the assumption that those voters would remain on their side. On Tuesday, Democrats ended up winning four of those seats.

For years, Latino voters have complained about being ignored by politicians in both parties. Now, they have the attention of Republicans and Democrats, playing a role that could shape government policy especially on the economy and immigration.

“You can draw the lines, but you can’t predict Latino voters,” said Erica Bernal-Martinez, the CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, a nonpartisan group. “Latinos sent a message every party, campaign and mapmaker needs to hear: Our vote cannot be assumed, and it will never be taken for granted.”

As Democrats ran up huge margins all over the country, their support from Hispanic voters was one of the most important demographic shifts. In 2024, Republicans received roughly 44% of the Latino vote. On Tuesday, the GOP’s share had shrunk back to 30%, slightly higher than the historic average.

But there were clear reminders that the group remains far from monolithic. In conservative strongholds in Florida, Republicans appeared poised to hold onto their seats in majority-Latino districts, though with far narrower margins than in recent years.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who has represented Miami for three terms, enraged her fellow Republicans when she released an ad in October warning that the party would lose Hispanic voters because of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. But the results Tuesday night suggested she was right.

At her party in Miami, she told supporters that it was a “moment of reckoning.”

“I am here to help the Republican Party and the White House understand what my community is saying loud and clear,” she said, adding that Hispanic voters “want a secure border, but they also want an immigration system that respects the dignity of hardworking people.”

On Wednesday evening, votes were still being counted in Salazar’s district.

While Sen. Ashley Moody, a Republican, was reelected in Florida, results showed that Hispanic voters supported the Democratic challenger, Angie Nixon, by a significantly greater margin than they had backed the Democrat in 2024.

The Latino shift away from Republicans could not be blamed on immigration policy alone.

Latino voters also revolted for many of the same reasons they chose President Donald Trump in the first place: They were furious about the cost of living and believed politicians in power were ignoring their struggles. For some Latinos, the issues of immigration and the economy are inextricably linked. Many live in areas that depend on immigrant labor and have seen the local economy plummet amid deportations. The shift among Hispanic voters was a mirror image of 2024: It happened all over the country, in urban and rural districts, with women and men. Hispanic voters without college degrees showed the most significant shift, moving 33 points toward Democrats.

Republican gains two years ago also relied heavily on young voters, and those too were largely wiped out, driven by Hispanic voters who skew younger than white voters. Roughly 2 in 3 Hispanic voters are younger than 50, compared with less than half of white voters.

The swing was among the most decisive in Texas, where Latinos make up roughly a quarter of all voters, and their support for Republicans was pared back significantly. Democrats won all along the southern border in majority Hispanic counties, fulfilling their long-promised dreams of a blue Texas.

In Webb and Hidalgo, two Hispanic-majority counties where Democrats easily won for decades, voters delivered a shocking victory for Republicans in 2024, but favored the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, by roughly 50 points Tuesday.

Few candidates captured the imagination of Hispanic voters in Texas like Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer who campaigned for the House at dozens of quinceañeras throughout his district. With supporters decked in rhinestone cowboy boots, his election night celebration took on the atmosphere of the kind of parties he said were crucial to winning the race.

“People are tired of one-party rule, and they want us to work together and they want results,” he said. “People cannot be used as a political football anymore.”

As he took the stage, a group of young mariachi players watched with tears in their eyes. This year, two members of the group were held in federal immigration detention. The family had entered the United States through the Brownsville border crossing on an asylum claim and their case drew national outrage, becoming a campaign issue in the race between Pulido, a Democrat, and Rep. Monica De La Cruz, the Republican incumbent who had hosted the musicians in Washington. After their release, the group performed at several events for Pulido.

“I’m just so happy and relieved,” said Lea Garcia, 20, wearing the group’s signature gold velvet mariachi suit. “I just want to be able buy a house, to get married and to have kids and stay in this state I love. And I want my friends to be able to stay here.”

Pulido said he would make overhauling the country’s broken immigration system a top priority in Washington.

In California, the shift was slightly more modest, with roughly three-quarters of Latino voters in the state backing Democrats in the House, a shift of 29 percentage points from 2024. That was enough to flip the 22nd Congressional District, which snakes through the Central Valley and has long been one of the most important targets for Democrats in the state. Latinos make up roughly 64% of the district and fueled the election of Randy Villegas, a progressive community college professor who will become the first Latino to represent the district.

There is little to suggest that this year’s swing signals a steadfast loyalty to Democrats among Hispanic voters.

“The GOP paid the price for being the party in power and not delivering,” said Daniel Garza, the executive director of Libre, a conservative group that works to persuade Latinos to vote for Republicans. “What’s at play is the middle, the voters that are swinging wildly. They have no home. There is no loyalty if they feel they are being ignored.”

–

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By: Jennifer Medina/Christopher Lee
c. 2026 The New York Times Company