Trump's Pennsylvania win fueled by economic concerns among Latino, working-class voters
Pennsylvania barbershop owner and second-generation American Ronald Corales, whose father immigrated to the U.S from Peru, voted for President-elect Donald Trump.
Democrats expected to do well with Latino voters, who now make up about 20% of the U.S. population, but Mr. Trump made gains with Latino voters both nationally and in key battleground states in the 2024 election. Corales' vote boiled down, in part, to the economy. He wasn't alone.
"A lot of the Latinos are working-class people," he said. "They have families. You know, they help their families, even outside the country as well."
Did Democrats take the Latino vote for granted?
Northampton County, where Corales lives and works, went for former President Barack Obama in 2012 and then to Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden flipped it back in 2020 and then Trump won it again in 2024. Latinos are the fastest-growing community in the county. Nationwide, Trump's Election Day support jumped 14 points among Latinos.
Corales' immigrant father was so thrilled to be in America that he named his son after President Ronald Reagan. Today, Corales said he finds some common ground with Mr. Trump, even on immigration.
"And hopefully President Trump will bring some kind of legalization to those immigrants because there's still a lot of good people out there," he said. "That they're willing to work and continue dreaming with the American dream."
Second and third-generation Latino families in the working and middle class are very sensitive to inflation, prices and the situation at the border, according to Leslie Sanchez, a Republican political analyst and contributor to CBS News.
"Those two pressures together created a community which wanted change," Sanchez said. "And they fundamentally felt, if you talk to them, that the Democratic Party had left them."
The Democratic party "absolutely" took the Latino vote for granted, Sanchez said.
"I would think the party of my parents, the party of my grandparents, just assumed that Latinos, as the community grew, and our population grew, that we would just naturally fall in line with the Democratic Party," Sanchez said. "And in the last 10 years about 10 percent more Hispanic Americans have moved into the middle class, they are much more sensitive to these economic issues. We live on the margins still so small ripples in inflation really have a dramatic impact."
"Egg-flation" helps Trump win
Despite a generally healthy economy, many Americans, frustrated with high prices, voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. According to the CBS MoneyWatch price tracker, since 2019, the average price of a dozen eggs has risen 176%, the price of a loaf of bread jumped 52%, and a pound of chicken breast is up 36%. Overall, prices in the U.S. jumped 22% between January 2020 and September of this year.
Pennsylvania pollster Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said many voters are focused on housing and grocery prices.
"I can't tell you how many times when I talk to people about elections this year, they referenced eggs and the price of eggs," he said.
At the Nazareth Diner near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the average tab is now $38, up from $24 in 2020. Manager Roz Werkheiser grew up in a Democratic household.
"My mother used to always say, got to vote Democrat. You know, they're for the poor people,'" she said.
Inflation, and interest rates are falling while wages are going up, but Werkheiser said she isn't feeling it.
"Everybody I talk to, nobody's wages went up," she said. "But we had four years of this. I mean, four years. Gas was super high. Yes, it just went down now, but what, the past four, three and a half years, it was up."
Trump voters trust economic conditions will improve under the president-elect, Anthony Salvanto, CBS News executive director of elections and surveys, said. They use the COVID-19 pandemic as an economic benchmark.
"The party in power is going to get blamed by a certain portion of the electorate for economic conditions that they don't like," Salvanto said. "And sometimes it's just as simple as that."
Lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters, focus on the wrong issues
The count is ongoing, but Vice President Kamala Harris is on pace to be several million votes short of where Mr. Biden was in 2020.
"The Harris campaign lost the turnout game in many respects. We all knew going in that one of the keys here were people who don't always vote, new voters, people who skipped the election in 2020," Salvanto said. "The Trump campaign did a better job than the Harris campaign at turning them out. Those 2020 non-voters broke for Donald Trump."
Her turnout failed even among women voters who the campaign hoped would turn out because of issues like abortion.
"They thought they would do better with women. They did not," Salvanto said. "They thought that the abortion issue would drive more people to the Harris side. It did not."
Democrat Susan Wild, Northampton County's representative in Congress, has served since 2018 and, on Tuesday, lost by 1.2% to Republican Ryan Mackenzie, a Trump disciple who questioned the 2020 election. She's been thinking about what's behind Democratic losses.
"If you are struggling to pay your rent or feed your kids, you don't have the privilege of thinking about things like LGBTQ rights. Unless you've got somebody in your own family that's personally affected, you don't have the luxury of thinking about reproductive rights," she said. "Unfortunately, I think our party needs to figure out that not everybody is just thinking about these very important social issues."
Wild says the party should spend more time in places like Pennsylvania's Northampton County and Lehigh Valley, and speak to people like her constituents. She also acknowledged a lack of enthusiasm for the top of the Democratic ticket.
"That part I think a lot of us didn't gauge," she said. "And just thinking that people were going to turn out to vote against Donald Trump was a miscalculation."
Looking to the future
With Arizona called on Saturday night, Mr. Trump swept all seven battleground states. Six of them had voted for Mr. Biden in the 2020 election. So far President-elect Trump has won just over 50 percent of the popular vote and made gains in key demographics, including young voters, Latinos, and women. Republicans took control of the Senate and are on track to win the House. As of now, more than 80% of counties shifted right on Election Day, a move that could be lasting.
"I think it's a shift but it's an important one," Salvanto said. "And not just in the battleground states, but in places like counties in New York, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania."
Sanchez thinks there's an opportunity for this to be a lasting change beyond this year's election.
"The question becomes, if Trump can really meet those promises, bring inflation down, make things more affordable, and make these families feel more financially secure, he's going to have an ally for probably several election cycles going forward," she said.
A new economy and new politics are at the forefront of change, Borick, the Pennsylvania pollster, said.
"It was such a Democratic place for such a long time, and that Democratic Party doesn't exist. Those Democratic voters don't exist the way they long did in Northampton County. They have to re-vision what it's going to look like," Borick said. "Does that center on candidates? Does it center on issues? The answer is all of those things."
Produced by Maria Gavrilovic, Henry Schuster and Nicole Young. Associate producers: Alex Ortiz, Kristin Steve and Sarah Turcotte.
