Republican voters are less white than ever, thanks to Donald Trump, writes Ilmari Reunamäki, who is starting as a US correspondent.
Ilmari Reunamäki, Yhdysvaltain correspondent
WASHINGTON Eight years ago Donald Trump surprised and won, but it was only to be a last show of strength for the dwindling white population.
The coalition that led to Trump’s election victory was completely unsustainable, they thought. Disillusioned with politicians, aging white Duners pinned their hopes on Trump, but the relative share of whites in the US population had already been declining since the 1940s.
The decline was only going to accelerate. The United States was rapidly becoming a minority-majority country, where whites would soon make up less than half of the entire population.
Trump would not be able to repeat his trick again, it was believed. The Democrats had a growing majority in their hands for the foreseeable future. Both Asians, blacks and Latinos were known to be reliable voters for the Democrats.
And now it may happen, that in a month Trump can win the election again, and this time he is getting a record number of minority votes as a Republican.
Trump is increasing his support from the last election among all minorities, but the most significant increase is among Latinos. Latino men in particular have become the single most interesting group of voters in the election.
Latinos with roots in South America or Central America already make up a fifth of the US population. Their number has roughly tripled since 1990 and they are now clearly the largest minority in the country.
Just eight years ago, Trump lost the Latino vote by almost 40 percentage points, four years ago by just over 20 percentage points.
In the latest polls Horrible Harris the advantage over Trump has been just over 10 percentage points among Latinos.
See how Latinos have supported Democratic and Republican candidates since the 2016 election in the graphic.
by NBC News in a recent poll, the support of Latino men was split exactly equally between Harris and Trump, and the majority of Latino men under the age of 50 wanted Trump back as president.
The movement of young Latino men behind Trump is part of a wider phenomenon. Professor specializing in opinion polls Christopher Borick recently estimated for that the increase in Trump’s support in this election comes largely from young men.
One in five Latinos will be voting for the first time in this election, so there are plenty of new voices to choose from.
As in much of the Western world, also in the United States the young men are left educational level young women after.
Latino men are no exception, they are the largest working-class group in the country. From Latinos by only about seven percent is a master’s degree, and Latino women are clearly more educated than Latino men.
Trump has learned that many Latino men also feel that their value in society has decreased.
Trump does not exactly present concrete ways to improve the position of Latino men, but at least he lets them understand that there is nothing wrong with masculinity.
Every American knows that if Trump gets to decide, the man is the head of the family.
The Democratic Party, which calls itself the Labor Party, is increasingly clearly the party of the educated upper middle class and women.
Harris has had clear difficulties in successfully talking to Latino men, while Trump has once again enjoyed campaigning in Latino areas and liked to call Harris a comrade.
Watch the video of Trump campaigning in Pennsylvania in a region heavily populated by Latinos:
Harris is for Latinos when speaking tried to remind about Trump’s repeated racist speeches. At one time, Trump claimed that Mexicans were rapists, recently he claimed that Haitians eat cats and dogs.
Harris also recalls how Trump promises to begin the “largest mass deportations in history” of illegal immigrants.
However, almost all Latinos do not feel strong solidarity towards those who came to the country illegally.
In the NBC poll, about half said that securing the border and stopping illegal immigration is more important than preventing discrimination against immigrants. About a third, on the other hand, said that immigration does more harm than good.
Harris’ campaign is trying to numb the wound and since August has spent more than 20 times more advertising money than Trump in the Spanish-language media to reach Latinos.
However, two-thirds of Latino voters are already second- or third-generation immigrants. For many young Latinos, English is a stronger language than Spanish. For many young Latinos, being American is a stronger identity than being an immigrant.
Trump tells them that in order to join the ranks of “real Americans” one more rite must be performed: voting for Trump.