It's been decades since we last saw a winning Republican coalition as multicultural as this one. Not every vote has been counted yet and the exit polls aren't identical, but we can cobble together enough numbers now for a picture to emerge.
Four years ago, according to NBC's exit polls, Hispanics favored Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump, 65 percent to 32 percent. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have gotten just 52 percent of the Latin vote, the worst showing for a Democrat since 2004, while Trump received 46 percent, the best showing for a Republican in modern times. (Yes: Trump did better than George W. Bush, a man whose Texas training always had him outperforming most Republicans among Latino voters.) Among Hispanic men, Trump won an outright majority of 55 percent. Trump carried several heavily Mexican-American counties in South Texas that used to be Democratic strongholds, including one—Starr County—that last went Republican in 1892.
