LITTLETON, Colo. — Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party.
The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.”
Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think. And Republicans’ position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president’s rhetoric against immigrants and the party’s shift to the right on immigration.
In November’s elections, 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast data. The survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters – including 7,738 Latino voters – was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
Other surveys also found roughly one-third of Latinos supporting the Republican Party. Data from the Pew Research Center and from exit polls suggests that a comparable share of about 3 in 10 Latino voters supported Trump in 2016. That tracks the share of Latinos supporting Republicans for the last decade.
The stability of Republicans’ share of the Latino vote frustrates Democrats, who say actions like Trump’s family separation policy and his demonization of an immigrant caravan should drive Latinos out of the Republican Party.
“The question is not are Democrats winning the Hispanic vote – it’s why aren’t Democrats winning the Hispanic vote 80-20 or 90-10 the way black voters are?” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster. He argues Democrats must invest more in winning Latino voters.
The VoteCast data shows that Latinos are split by gender – 61 percent of men voted Democratic in November, while 69 percent of women did. And while Republican-leaning Latinos can be found everywhere in the country, two groups stand out as especially likely to back Republicans – evangelicals and veterans.
Evangelicals comprised about one-quarter of Latino voters, and veterans were 13 percent. Both groups were about evenly split between the two parties. Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in California, said those groups have reliably provided the Republican Party with many Latino votes for years.
“They stick and they do not go away,” Madrid said. Attacks on the president and other Republicans for being anti-immigrant “just make them dig in even more,” he said.
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