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Vice President Kamala Harris won more Latino votes than President-elect Donald Trump in this year's election. But Trump made huge gains across the country, earning more support from Latinos than any Republican presidential candidate in U.S. history. Yuma County, Arizona, on the state's border with Mexico, is one of the nation's many majority Latino counties that shifted dramatically towards Trump. NPR's Adrian Florido went there to find out why.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Hey.
FERNANDO NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: Fernando. Pleased to meet you.
FLORIDO: Adrian. Nice to meet you. Fernando Nunez-Dominguez lives with his parents in a working-class Mexican American neighborhood in Yuma. Before the election, he hung a huge Donald Trump sign on the fence out front, a bold move in this deep-blue neighborhood.
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: My dad, he was having second thoughts about it, 'cause they're going to steal it; they're going to do something to the house. But I think we were just, like, let's just do it. So he went and bought the zip ties, and we put it up together.
FLORIDO: In the past, they wouldn't have dreamed of it. Nunez-Dominguez's dad has voted Democrat since the '90s, when he became a U.S. citizen. And they both used to loathe Donald Trump.
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: Oh, I hated him, like, despised Trump. I thought he was racist.
FLORIDO: But this year, his dad voted for Trump, and Nunez, who's 20, did too. Why Trump?
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: The economy, definitely.
FLORIDO: He points to a car parked out on the street.
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: It's my first car. I get so pissed when have to go pay for gas with the prices and everything going up, 'cause most of Latinos here in Yuma County, we all been struggling through this economy under her.
FLORIDO: He means Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: And that's why I feel a lot of people flip towards Trump.
FLORIDO: Nuñez was so motivated to elect Trump, convinced he'll make things affordable again, that he knocked on doors in Latino neighborhoods all across this rural desert county on Arizona's border with Mexico. He wasn't expecting what he heard from a lot of the young Latinos who answered the door.
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: Most of them were for Trump.
FLORIDO: Did that surprise you?
NUNEZ-DOMINGUEZ: Yes, 'cause I thought it was mostly white people who were for Trump, honestly. I would get so happy and excited, I would always hug them, and they would hug me back.
FLORIDO: It was a sign to him that when it came to Latino voters in his county, this election was going to be different. And it was. Trump won Yuma County in 2016 and 2020, but just by a few points. This year, Trump won it by 20 points.
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FLORIDO: That's thanks in large part to the massive Republican shift in places like Somerton. It's one of Yuma County's three cities. It's 95% Mexican American, surrounded by lettuce and spinach fields.
VALENTIN CASILLAS: Somerton has always been a deep-blue community.
FLORIDO: Valentin Casillas was raised here.
V CASILLAS: Growing up, I don't think it was even a question. We just all were Democrat.
FLORIDO: But Casillas switched in 2008, when he realized his conservative social values aligned more with the Republican Party. He didn't know other Republicans then.
V CASILLAS: I came out, a lot of people unfriended me. But then when you posted on social media, then somebody would message you, hey, I'm with you. I agree with you. They wouldn't make it public because, you know, a lot of people were afraid to go against the norm.
FLORIDO: When about 7% of Somerton's voters chose Donald Trump in 2016, he was shocked. It seemed like a lot to him back then. This year, Trump got over 40% here.
V CASILLAS: It was mind-blowing - mind-blowing.
FLORIDO: Casillas had had a sense the shift was going to be big this year. He helped organize Latinos For Trump caravans. And from the hundreds of people who came, he heard a lot of the same.
V CASILLAS: Man, I can't talk about politics in my house. I can't mention any Trump. But, oh, with you guys, I can talk freely. It's great. Like, they were able to vent.
FLORIDO: He says they vented about what they saw as too much focus by the Democratic Party on issues like transgender rights for kids. They vented about the surge of illegal immigration to the U.S., but above all, they vented about inflation.
V CASILLAS: The attack on your children, the border issues, but way up there is our finances. We can't afford things.
CYNTHIA CASILLAS: Yeah. Money's super tight right now. Yes. We're barely making ends meet.
FLORIDO: This is Casillas' wife, Cynthia Casillas. He is a farm inspector for the state. She has a skincare and day spa business.
C CASILLAS: With inflation being so high, I have to charge more, and people don't have that extra money. So it's hard.
FLORIDO: That's why she voted for Trump. She had long voted Democratic, but a few years ago, struggling as a single mom, she started to question what her family always told her.
C CASILLAS: We should not support Republicans, because Republicans are for the rich, and Democrats are for the poor. But I'm thinking, for the poor, how? It took me a little bit. I'm like, I'm not sure if I'm a Republican yet. And then when I started looking at the values that Republicans had, I started realizing, oh, that's me. I am more of a conservative.
FLORIDO: She says she likes how Republicans talk about family and hard work over handouts. It was a big deal to realize she didn't have to be a Democrat. A lot of her friends and clients realized that this year, too, she says, which is why she thinks this big Hispanic shift toward Republicans could be a lasting one. Araceli Rodriguez hopes that is not the case. She was also raised in Somerton, the daughter of farmworkers.
She's an attorney now, a precinct leader with the local Democratic Party. When she saw the vote totals for Trump in her town, it was disbelief.
ARACELI RODRIGUEZ: I'm angry. I'm shocked. I feel betrayed. But on the other hand, looking back, the signs were all there.
FLORIDO: Somerton is a working-class town, high unemployment. People struggle. She's convinced Trump's policies will make their lives worse, not better. But now, like a lot of Democrats, she's also thinking about how the party wins these Latinos back.
RODRIGUEZ: They're not going to vote the way their parents voted just 'cause their parents voted like that. I think the Latino community here, it's a microcosm of what happened in other communities, and so I don't think the party should take any vote for granted.
FLORIDO: People here have shown their vote is up for grabs. The Democratic Party needs a good economic plan, she says, and it needs to court them aggressively.
Adrian Florido, NPR News, Yuma, Arizona.
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