WASHINGTON (AP) — Brian Leija, a 31-year-old small business owner from Belton, Texas, wasn’t surprised that a growing number of Latino men of his generation voted for Donald Trump for president this year. Leija voted Republican in 2016 and 2020.

Leija’s reasoning was simple: He said he benefited from Trump’s economic policies, including tax cuts.

“I’m a worker,” Leija said. “So the tax breaks for small businesses are ideal for what I do. »

For DaSean Gallisaw, a consultant in Fairfax, Virginia, voting for Trump was rooted in what he saw as Democrats’ rhetoric not matching their actions. “It’s been a long time since Democrats really kept their promises about what they were going to do for minority communities,” he said.

Gallishaw, 25, who is black, also voted for Trump twice before. This year, he said, he thought the former president’s “minority community outreach really showed through.”

Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and especially among men under 45, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of of more than 120,000 voters.

Even as a Democrat Kamala Harris won a majority of black and Latino voters, it wasn’t enough to give the vice president the White House, due to the gains Trump made.

The economy and jobs have made men under 45 more open to Trump

Overall, voters cited the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the country. This was also true for black and Hispanic voters.

About 3 in 10 black men under 45 voted for Trump, about double the share he received in 2020. Young Latinos, especially young Latino men, were also more open to Trump than to Trump. in 2020. About half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared to about 6 in 10 who went for Biden.

Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, the largest and oldest civil rights organization for Hispanic Americans, said the election results clearly show that Trump’s message on the economy resonated with Latinos.

“I think it’s important to say that Latinos have a significant impact in choosing the next president and in the re-election of Donald Trump,” Proaño said. “(Latino) men have certainly responded to the president’s populist message and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support for immigration reform.”

The Rev. Derrick Harkins, a pastor who served the Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York, oversaw outreach to black American religious communities for more than a decade. He said Trump hypermasculine appeal worked to win over some young men of color.

“I think Trump, with this fake machismo, has been effective among young men, black, white, Hispanic,” Harkins said. “And I think unfortunately, even though it’s a very small percentage, you know, when you’re talking about an election like we just had, it can have a very big impact.”

Black and Latino voters’ priorities have changed compared to 2020

While about 4 in 10 young voters under 45 across all racial and ethnic groups identified the economy as the top issue facing the country, older white and Latino voters were also likely to cite the economy. immigration, with around a quarter saying it was the main problem. .

A clear majority of young black voters described the economy as “not very good” or “bad,” compared to about half of older black voters. The majority of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape.

That belief has made it harder for Harris to point to the economy’s actual numbers, which show inflation has fallen significantly, unemployment remains low and wages have risen. These voters simply did not feel this progress.

This is the first time that Alexis Uscanga, a 20-year-old student from Brownville, Texas, has voted in a presidential election. The economy and immigration were the issues that led him to vote for Trump, he said.

“Everything has become much more expensive than before for me,” Uscanga said. “Gasoline, groceries, even as a student, everything has gone up in price and that’s a big concern for me and other issues like immigration.”

Having grown up selling tamales and used cars and washing cars, Uscanga knows how difficult it can be to make a living. When Trump was president, he said, that wasn’t the case.

“Under the Trump presidency, there have been many opportunities,” Uscanga said. “I didn’t like President Trump very much because of his rhetoric in 2016, but I look aside from that and the way we were living in 2018, 2019, I just felt like we were living a good life no matter what anyone said the media and that’s why I started supporting him after that.

Although the shift of votes from black and Latino men to Trump had an impact, Trump could not have won without the support of a majority of white voters.

“Men of color are really starting to emerge as the new influential voters,” said Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a polling and research firm that has conducted studies for the Harris campaign.

“For a long time we have talked about suburban women and football players who can swing the outcome of elections. Today, men of color are really starting to emerge, particularly younger men of color, who are less ideological, less tied to a single party, and more likely to move between parties or enter and get out of the electorate,” Woodbury said.

The desire for strong leadership made Trump more attractive

A majority of voters nationwide said Trump was a strong leader; just under half said the same about Harris. Among Hispanic voters, even higher numbers viewed Trump as strong in this election. About 6 in 10 Hispanic men described Trump as a strong leader, compared to 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, compared to 37%.

Black men and women were about twice as likely as in 2020 to describe Trump as a strong leader.

David Means, a black purchasing manager in Atlanta, abstained from voting in the election because he felt that neither Harris nor Trump were making the right appeals to black men. But the election results did not disappoint him.

“I am satisfied with the result. I don’t feel wronged. I was not disappointed. I wasn’t advocating for Trump or Kamala, but I didn’t want a woman in that position, he said. And if it were a woman, Means said, “I’d rather have a really strong, intelligent woman, like, like Judge Judy.” »

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Figueroa reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela in New York, Sharon Johnson in Atlanta and Darren Sands contributed to this report.

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