A new analysis of voter opinions in a swing district has purportedly revealed a "clue" as to how Democrats can regain power.
Greg Sargent of The New Republic highlighted what "the small city of Reading in central Pennsylvania," which he said is "around 70 percent Latino."
"In 2024, it shifted toward Trump by a staggering net 16 points. I spent some time trying to figure out why that happened," he said on social media on X Friday.
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Sargent pointed to his newest column, which states, "Latino voters shifted dramatically toward Trump in the last election. Reading, Pennsylvania offers a clue to how Democrats can claw them back."
"What unfolded in Reading, then, is an object lesson in what Democrats must urgently avoid going forward, if they are to prevent their coalition from fraying further and preserve their hopes of a comeback in 2026, 2028, and beyond," according to the new report. "Though more data is needed to figure out what really happened here, it’s already clear that none of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric or actions weighed sufficiently on the Latino voters who shifted toward him—because inflation mattered a lot more. Preelection polling by the Times showed that, for Latinos, the economy was far and away the most important issue, with immigration a distant third. A staggering 81 percent of Latino voters saw economic conditions as 'poor' or 'only fair.' Meanwhile, a whopping 63 percent simply did not believe that Trump’s menacing rhetoric about immigrants was aimed at them."
"Indeed, in some cases, immigration might have played in Trump’s favor among Latino voters," the columnist wrote. "In South Texas, for instance, many majority-Hispanic counties shifted hard toward Trump, including a number of them along the border. This suggests that, for some Latinos, border security is as important (if not more so) as how welcoming our country is toward legal immigrants, and that they blamed Harris and Biden for being overly lax on the issue while crediting Trump as 'strong' on it. These claims are absurdly unfair, but they seemed to resonate, and now we need to do the work of figuring out what it all means."
Sargent learned from Reading Mayor Eddie Morán, a Democrat who Sargent says is the first Latino elected to that office in the city, and found another key thing for Democrats to understand.
"Driving around Reading with Morán underscored another big takeaway: The Latino electorate is extremely diverse, even though it’s often treated in our political discourse as a monolith. Not only are many heritages represented in this small city alone—Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Colombians—but the variety of life experiences is also striking and should be factored into understanding the challenges Democrats face," he wrote, before showing how Trump appeals to certain generations of people who have big entrepreneurial dreams.
"For instance, Morán said, because Latinos have been arriving in Reading for decades, many residents are first- and second-generation Hispanics, some of whom work in professions like health care, the region’s second-largest industry. At the same time, many more recent arrivals are working-class, a lot of whom are drawn to the area to work in factories—Deka battery manufacturing, for instance, or the Giorgio Mushroom Co.—that are within a short drive of the city. Meanwhile, low real estate costs have attracted many other recent arrivals who have opened small businesses here, Morán told me," Sargent wrote. "Among some of these people who aspire to business success, Trump’s folk appeal as a businessman-celebrity appears to resonate."Read the full report here.
