Ash Center Event Examines Rightward Shift of Black and Latino Voters

Two professors argued that Black and Latino voters in the 2024 presidential election shifted rightward because of their broader dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party during an Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation webinar Thursday evening.

Harvard Kennedy School professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad hosted the event, which also featured analysis from Johns Hopkins history professor Leah Wright Rigueur. Rigueur and Muhammad asserted that it is unfair to blame Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat on Black and Latino voters’ increased support for President-elect Donald Trump.

“In the autopsy section of the election, it is very quick to blame or look for a scapegoat for explaining why the Democratic Party lost so badly, in a way that essentially is trying to position Black and Latino men as the problem,” Rigueur said.

“Black and Latino men are not the problem,” she added.

Black men still overwhelmingly supported Harris in the 2024 election, but by a narrower margin than they did Biden in 2020. However, a majority of Latino men — a demographic that President Joe Biden carried in 2020 — voted for Trump in 2024.

Rigueur argued that Democrats should not attribute Harris’s loss to voters of color when white voters constitute a majority of the electorate. Muhammad added that racism and sexism made Harris unpalatable for many white Americans.

“The relationship of her status as a woman and as a Black person were inseparable from the vitriol she faced as a candidate,” he said.

Muhammad pointed out that the majority of white men supported Trump. He cited a 2019 study showing that white women’s race, across education levels and class, was a significant factor in driving them to vote for Republican candidates in recent presidential elections.

Rigueur and Muhammad also faulted the Democratic Party for taking the support of voters of color for granted, a misstep which could have driven them to either cast a ballot for Trump or abstain altogether. In particular, Rigueur said that young Black and Latino voters — the age demographic that swung most dramatically rightward, according to NBC exit polls — saw Trump as emblematic of change and Harris as representative of the establishment.

“We see a lot of conversation from very famous Black celebrities, but also from Black men on the ground, where they are talking about not necessarily abandoning the Democratic Party, but their very clear frustrations with the Democratic Party,” Rigueur said.

Black voters in particular feel their loyalty to the party has not produced tangible improvements in their lives, she added.

“One of the things that Black voters have been increasingly articulating in the aftermath of Barack Obama, is that, ‘Look, having a Black president is not enough,” Rigueur said. “And saying to the Democratic Party, ‘We want something in exchange for our loyalty.’”

The Democratic Party has also misunderstood the concerns of Latino voters, Rigueur said. She noted how many Democrats have assumed that immigration and pathways to citizenship — two issues where Trump has advocated for hardline restrictions — are the most important concerns for Latino voters.

Instead, Rigueur said that Latinos have consistently cited the economy as their number one issue — a trend the Republican Party has deliberately appealed to since George W. Bush’s presidency.

“It is absolutely a fallacy to assume that demographics must be destiny,” Rigueur said. “The remarkable thing is, the Republican Party figured that out. It is amazing to me that the Democratic Party has yet to figure that out.”