For PA Republicans, Engagement with Hispanic Voters Needs to Start Now
Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania were not just consequential but decisive in 2024, shifting by double digits toward Republicans and showing up at higher rates than in prior elections. Except for North Carolina, where district lines were redrawn, the Keystone State was the only one in the nation that flipped two congressional districts from Democrat to Republican. State house and Senate districts with significant Latino communities moved to the right, and one seat in diverse Northeast Philadelphia even went Republican, stunning state Democrats. The 14% statewide shift of Hispanic voters toward Republicans more than made the difference for newly elected U.S. Senator Dave McCormick, who forced Bob Casey out of office with a margin of just 16,000 votes statewide.
My firm bootstrapped and ran the only statewide messaging for Republicans to Hispanic voters, reaching working-class people in every major community across Pennsylvania’s “Latino Belt,” including in Philadelphia, the largest concentration of voters in the state. What I heard from many campaigns and consultants in the run-up to November 2024 was similar to what I heard in 2022 and 2023, when we managed similar efforts: “Hispanics don’t vote.”
Well, in 2024, they did – and they turned Pennsylvania red.
Starting in the northeast corner of the state, where first-time candidate and businessman Rob Bresnahan defeated six-term Rep. Matt Cartwright, Latino voters in Hazleton – most of Dominican origin – helped move the city seven points to the right. For many of these voters, it was their second general election in 2024; the Dominican Republic held elections in May 2024. Other Hispanic voters across Northeast Pennsylvania, who live and work in the hill towns that dot the former anthracite coal region, shifted Republican at double or triple the rate statewide.
Directly south, in the Lehigh Valley, former state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie defeated incumbent Democrat Susan Wild in the swingy 7th Congressional District, with Puerto Rican-origin voters in Allentown and Bethlehem swinging decisively to the right. If the trend of Hispanic voters exiting the Democratic Party continues, as I predicted it would in 2022, both congressional seats will stay in Republican hands through 2030 (even with a rumored Cartwright-Bresnahan rematch in 2026).
And in Philadelphia, where Dominicans are becoming the city’s largest immigrant group, majority-Hispanic precincts tripled their support of Donald Trump between 2016 and 2024, and helped defeat a Democratic state senator (the only Republican flip in the state legislature). My firm ran an outreach campaign here to target tens of thousands of these voters, helping lift Republican vote-share citywide to over 20% for the first time this century.
Pennsylvania Republicans, who have historically ignored or written off these voters, couldn’t believe their luck this election. “Jobs, inflation, and public safety were top of mind for almost every voter in our commonwealth,” says Carl Marrara, executive director of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, a major economic driver in the state. “In the Hispanic community, these issues have been amplified, and for the last four years, Democrats have failed on every front.”
But these new Republican voters will tune out in 2025 and 2026 if Republicans don’t get in front of them. That’s because some of them, like those with dual Ecuadorian or Honduran citizenship, may be more focused on elections in their home countries. And others may not cast another ballot until the next presidential contest. This could be especially true if things go well for President Trump and congressional Republicans; a return to economic and policy normalcy could allow low-propensity voters to disconnect from the political world.
The need for greater Republican engagement with these communities matters even more as the Democratic Party becomes more dominated by elite, educated white voters, who turn out at much higher levels in off-year and midterm elections. This new Democratic base can afford the effects of policies like inflationary spending and opposition to school choice and is more comfortable with the party’s leftward social turn. Republicans will need to rely on working-class people to get out and vote in order to continue the progress statewide in 2025, and in the 2026 midterms – and that means getting in front of our newest voters and selling our policies.
How? Engagement at both the grassroots and messaging levels. Elected officials and candidates should attend community events, hire staff from the communities they represent, and consider opening bilingual offices, as Hazleton-area State Rep. Dane Watro and State Sen. Dave Argall have done. This also means showing up where voters are getting their news, with advertising and interviews on Spanish print, digital, and radio outlets.
This type of outreach pays off. I asked state Sen. Argall about his work with Hispanic constituents in the Hazleton area, including the opening of bilingual offices in his district. He told me that “no candidate should ever ignore any group of voters. That’s why we reached out in a multimedia campaign to our Hispanic constituents in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties throughout the election campaign. Since we won every single precinct [in our districts], including those with large numbers of Hispanic voters, we know the strategy was quite successful.”
Marrara certainly sees the opportunity. “It’s being recognized among Hispanic voter and all voters that Republicans are the party of the working class, for economic growth and opportunity, and for law and order,” he tells me. “At last, Republicans are connecting with the Hispanic community to share what their vision for the future holds – better yet, these voters are listening.”
In the near term, Hispanic voters have become alienated from Democrats because the party has been captured by an ideological fringe far to the left of everyday people, including a critical mass of Hispanic voters. Only a fundamental reevaluation of Democratic priorities – away from elite, fringe social and economic interests, and back to kitchen-table issues – can win back these formerly loyal Democrats. Luckily for Republicans, the ideologues that run the Left’s institutions don’t seem prepared to confront this reality. For the time being, at least, working-class voters will likely continue shifting Republican.
But that’s no reason for the GOP to grow complacent. For Republicans, holding onto these new supporters will require planning and engagement – starting now.
