By Jesus Mesa
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Mike Madrid has spent 35 years studying Latino voters. He's a Republican strategist, former California GOP political director, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, and author of "The Latino Century." So when Republicans celebrated Trump's 2024 gains with Latino voters as a historic realignment, Madrid pushed back hard.
It wasn't a realignment at all, he told Carlo Versano in an interview on Newsweek's The 1600 podcast. It was a de-alignment. And understanding the difference is crucial to understanding American politics going forward.
"I was very critical of that term. I characterize it as a de-alignment," Madrid said. "There has been this sort of rightward shift going on for the better part of a decade now. But this is more a movement away from the Democratic Party than it is a movement towards the Republican Party."
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The distinction matters because it reveals what both parties have gotten fundamentally wrong about Latino voters: they're not shifting toward Republicans, or away from the GOP toward Democrats. They're rejecting both parties. And they're only staying anywhere because they have no real alternative.
The American electorate has become increasingly rigid. Working-class whites aren't leaving the Republican Party (though polls since the start of the Iran war are starting to show cracks in that base of support). Meanwhile, working-class Blacks aren't leaving the Democratic Party. The delta of movement in both groups hovers around 3 percent, regardless of conditions. But Latinos are different. They're swinging 25 points between election cycles, making them—according to Madrid—the only real swing voters left.
"It's like really the last swing voter is the Latino voter," Madrid said.
But here's what makes them swing: they're not becoming Republicans. They're becoming nothing. Polling shows that overwhelmingly, Latino voters feel they don't have a real choice between the two parties. They're rejecting whichever party is in power as the failures of government—on the economy, on the border—become undeniable.
The Realignment That Never Was
What Madrid calls a "de-alignment" rather than a realignment began during the Obama era, when Democrats embraced a theory that would shape strategy for two decades: demographics is destiny. If they waited long enough, the Latino population would deliver a permanent majority. The party didn't have to do anything but wait.
"That 'demographic is destiny' starts to become real orthodoxy in the Democratic Party," Madrid said. "It becomes a sacrosanct belief that in time every non-white person is going to vote 80 percent with the Democratic Party."
The flaw was fundamental: it treated Latinos as a racial voting bloc rather than economic voters. But the warning signs were there. In 2016, Latino voters in Nevada rejected Hillary Clinton in the primary for Bernie Sanders. Young Latinos were rejecting establishment politics. Democrats missed it.
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"That should've been the warning sign, right? That was the canary in the coal mine, and they still haven't entirely adjusted yet," Madrid said. "And this is 10 years ago."
Democrats doubled down. They convinced themselves that Latinos would vote blue because of immigration. It was a caricature. When Kamala Harris lost an historic share of Latino support in 2024, Democrats blamed misogyny and racism. Madrid points out that Latinos had voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at higher rates.
"The left will say, Oh, it's because Latinos are misogynist and they're racist. She owned it, and should have, and it's one of the reasons why she lost," Madrid said.
The real issue: immigration isn't even in the top five issues for Latino voters. The obsession reflects a lack of understanding.
"When you talk to Latinos about immigration, what you're really saying is, I view you this one caricaturized way," Madrid said. "They're rejecting the system broadly."
What Latinos Actually Want
The data is clear: Latinos are pocketbook voters. They care about cost of living, job opportunities, upward mobility. Neither party is talking to them that way, which is why they're moving away from both.
"The one common cultural characteristic that all of these Latinos together—whether you're Cuban in Miami or Mexican in the Rio Grande Valley or Dominican up in New Jersey—is they want a party of the blue-collar working-class voter," Madrid said.
Trump had an opening with Latino voters that hadn't existed since the Reagan era. Then he announced Liberation Day, sparking a global trade war, and the numbers collapsed. It wasn't the ICE raids—three-and-a-half months before the Los Angeles crackdowns, Trump's numbers were already cratering because he talked about tariffs and introduced chaos into financial markets. He turned his strongest issue into his weakest.
Trump himself isn't why Latinos swung toward Republicans. DeSantis, Abbott, and Ducey all outperformed Trump using the same message. "Donald Trump is not the Pied Piper bringing Latinos to the Republican party. He's actually a hindrance," Madrid said.
This matters because the electoral map is shifting in ways both parties are slow to recognize. Democrats have bet on the Rust Belt—white working-class voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. But those voters aren't coming back. The future, Madrid said, lies in the Sun Belt: North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia. All have exploding Latino populations and college-educated voters.
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"The future of the 270 map for the Democratic Party is through the Sun Belt," Madrid said.
For Republicans, the challenge is different. They've built strength among non-college-educated voters through Trump, who is increasingly an electoral liability with an approval rating breaching the 30s. If they can build a pluralistic message welcoming working-class voters of all backgrounds, they could dominate for a generation.
According to Madrid, Marco Rubio represents the Republican Party's best chance at that future. Madrid was a Rubio guy in 2016, hoping the party would move in a different direction than Trumpism. The fact that Rubio has not only survived MAGA but thrived in it, ascending to Secretary of State, is instructive.
"He's the only serious guy in there," Madrid said. "Love him or hate him, I think there's going to be a big battle" between Rubio and others like Ted Cruz for the party's direction.
"Whichever party is able to capture the hearts and minds of a multi-ethnic aspirational working class is gonna be the dominant party of the next generation," Madrid said.
Watch the full conversation between Mike Madrid with Carlo Versano in the video player above or on YouTube.
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