Opinion | Obama Won Record Numbers of Nonwhite Voters. This Is How the Democrats Lost Them.

It seemed that the multiracial
coalition that elected Barack Obama
would secure a Democratic
future for this country for decades.

It seemed that the
multiracial coalition
that elected Barack
Obama would
secure a Democratic
future for this
country for decades.

But instead, as America grows
more diverse, it has become more
conservative. Why?

But instead, as
America grows
more diverse, it has
become more
conservative. Why?

By Daniel Martinez HoSang Dr. HoSang is a professor of American studies and political science at Yale University.

When I met Joey Gibson in the spring of 2018, I was sure he was an oddity. He was a Japanese American leader of a right-wing group in the Pacific Northwest that rallied for Donald Trump and menaced opponents on the left. But Mr. Gibson also disavowed white supremacy and spoke candidly about harms against the Black community, building a movement that was at once multiracial and conservative.

For decades, the dominant assumption has been that people of color in the United States would find their natural political home within the Democratic Party, with its commitment to racial liberalism. The nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity seemed to ensure the left’s electoral future.

My colleague Joseph Lowndes and I have been studying the movement of nonwhite voters to the right for 15 years. When we began this work, people like Mr. Gibson — who told us they hated the establishment, who felt let down or left behind by the politics of the Democratic Party — were often disdained by liberals as dupes of the right voting against their own interests, votes they would regret once they saw their conservative beliefs in action.

But seven years later, Mr. Gibson seems to be much less of an anomaly. Mr. Trump nearly doubled his support among Black voters from 2020 to 2024, won some 40 percent of the Asian American vote, and took almost half of the Latino vote. Many of those I have spoken with recently — students, lawyers, mechanics, pastors and others — sounded strikingly similar to Mr. Gibson. Angry at a system they contend is indifferent to their lives, they express ideas that were once seen only on the far-right fringe.

The rightward drift of minority voters is not a story of just one election. It is a phenomenon years in the making, one that is reshaping the American political landscape. And to understand this movement, you must understand the transformations in the places they are happening.

“I joined the Democratic Party because I’m Black. At my first Democratic meeting, two themes that had me reconsider everything about being a Democrat: The first thing was, ‘We have to help the poor Black men and women because the white man is holding them down.’ This is the first time I hear about this white savior complex from white liberals. Then they said, ‘We have to fight for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.’ We have to do this or we are a racist or you’re a bigot or you’re a homophobe if I don’t agree with you.

When you get your food stamp review, you have to go give shot records, school records, blood type. You almost have to get absolutely naked to get a $50 increase. But you have people coming to this country who have no documentation who are staying in hotels for two years, for free? How is that right?

A lot of Black people have already heard the promises from the Democrats. And nothing was delivered.”

Orlando Owens, 51, is a minister and political activist.

Owens isn’t the only
voter in Milwaukee
who believes the
Democratic Party
is indifferent to
his needs.

“A lot of Black people are not MAGA. They’re rejecting the Democrat leadership because of how they’re running our communities.”

Tory Lowe, 49, is a radio host and community advocate: “I voted for Obama. The energy was, let’s see if we can get a brother in. So we had eight years of Obama, and the communities didn’t change. Our communities probably got worse.

A lot of Black people are not MAGA. They’re rejecting the Democrat leadership because of how they’re running our communities. They need to take accountability for how they have mismanaged the Black communities. They’re trying to continue to move forward fearmongering against the Trump administration, instead of saying, ‘OK, let’s redo and make it right.’”

“The policies that
the Republican
Party supports — pulling yourself up by your bootstraps — were in our household already.”

Cindy Werner, 65, is a retired property manager: “I grew up in a household where I had a single mom. My dad passed when I was much younger and my mother raised us. It was the responsibility of those of us who were older than our younger siblings to take care of them. So the policies that the Republican Party supports —pulling yourself up by your bootstraps — were in our household already.

My mom being a single mom, there were times when we got the government cheese, we got the government milk. But I could see the change within the Black community where there was more dependency on the government and that became just like voting Democrat became. It just became a habit.”

“I am not particularly anti-gay marriage.
It just isn’t what I see bringing down my community.”

Erik Ngutse, 33, is a community engagement director for the Wisconsin Republican Party and an immigrant from Rwanda: “I worked on Obama’s campaign, knocked on a few doors for him and organized students. It was something about when Hillary Clinton ran for office that I think I started realizing that a lot of the values that I truly believed in were more on the conservative side. I absolutely despised her idea that she already owned the Black vote, that she didn’t really have to do anything.

I’ve always been fairly patriotic. When we were coming here, America was a far-fetched dream. I feel like I owe America quite a bit.

I care very little for the social aspect of things. I am not particularly anti-gay marriage or anything. It just isn’t what I see bringing down my community.”

“What do we
have to lose?”

Shana Gray, 46, is a cafe owner: “In my cafe, I kept hearing from the African-American community — how they were struggling not to just care for themselves but care for their families, and how much it was taking a toll on their very existence. We’re all going through these changes with the fluctuation of the economy, and we’re all kind of just holding each other’s hands while we’re getting through this.

For many, many years we have voted Democratic, but we have nothing to show for that other than the continued fight for civil rights. I am tired of fighting. At this point, individuals like myself and others in my community were like, what do we have to lose? Because we feel like we’re losing, and we have nothing to lose to try something different.”

In many ways, the story of Milwaukee’s disillusioned Black voters encapsulates the tectonic shifts in American society that voters of color have faced in recent years. Like many other distressed cities, Milwaukee continues to reel from the foreclosure crisis, the opioid epidemic and chronic funding shortfalls. Together, these problems have created cracks in the bedrock of Democratic support in these communities.

That bedrock was formed over the last 70 years. In the 1960s, as the civil rights movement pressed for governmental action to address longstanding patterns of discrimination and inequality, the national Democratic Party slowly aligned itself with this vision. Landmark legislation on issues like segregation and equal opportunity employment established Democrats as the party that could deliver for nonwhite voters. The party formed alliances with the places and institutions that were pillars of these communities: churches and places of worship, community newspapers, labor unions and other civic organizations where voters of color congregated.

But the America that this version of the Democratic Party emerged from has changed drastically. The restructuring of the U.S. economy over the last 40 years, along with the yawning inequality it has spurred, has disproportionately hurt communities of color. The Democratic-championed civil rights protections and social welfare programs that have defined the party’s appeal to nonwhite voters have proven inadequate in the face of the interconnected crises that define America now. Policies to address residential segregation some 70 years ago can do little to ease the housing shortages plaguing many communities today. The 1965 Immigration Act was not designed to manage the migration driven by economic downturns, military strife and climate catastrophes unfolding around the globe.

And yet, Democrats have largely doubled down on promising relatively modest policy reforms meant to speak to the interests of voters of color. Shana Gray, a cafe owner in Milwaukee, told me how frustrated she had become with Democrats in her community. “‘Oh, just give us your vote.’ That’s all we heard,” she told me. “There was no action behind that. Maybe they were speaking the language of reform for themselves, but the people who had mattered were not feeling that.”

Disappointed in the party that they saw as presiding over these profound economic shifts, nonwhite voters found that the institutions where many of them found their political identities — churches, unions, clubs — have been in decline.

Unmoored from these places and groups, voters of color today are shaped by many new forces, including right-wing podcasts, influencers and social media — some of it specific to individual ethnic and linguistic groups — that have atomized people even within their own community.

The narrative emerging from this wave of new media is a compelling one to disaffected communities of color; it captures the very real struggles they experience and repackages them as proof that Democratic policies have failed them. Tory Lowe, a Black voter in Milwaukee, echoed this message. He told me his city had suffered brutal economic headwinds under Democratic control. “We got eight years of Obama,” he said. “That didn’t stop the police killings. That didn’t stop the crime rate. That didn’t bring us jobs.”

In California, the Asian American community stands as a microcosm of the collapsing support for Democrats. San Francisco is home to the country’s oldest Asian American political organization, the Chinese American Democratic Club, founded in 1958. In the decades that followed, Asian Americans played prominent roles in local housing, labor and racial justice activism. But as the community has grown — from 58,000 in 1960 to nearly 300,000 by 2020 — it has also become far more diverse, its members holding a wider range of political views.

“My family immigrated to the United States
in 1983. Small-business owners, we’re not in the middle class, we’re
a little bit lower. We barely make it to keep our families running. We feel like we are the forgotten ones. In California, people tend to vote Democrat, and Democrats represent minorities. But during those four years of Biden, they are not looking from our point of view.

I have four stores in Chinatown. My store was broken into two times. At my gift shop, they took money and they took one tablet. My boba shop was broken into and vandalized. In those years, it was really unsafe. A criminal is a criminal. Elected officials did not stand up to say that.

It felt like there’s nothing you can change in California, so we were all just complaining. When I ask my friends, what do you think of President Trump? They are all pretty satisfied.”

Nancy Yu Law, 53, is a business owner.

While crime was an
animating issue in
this community, many
identified with the
cultural values of the
right as well.

“I want to see Americans go in the right direction. California is definitely in the wrong direction.”

Kathy Wu, 65, is an interpreter: “We have no way to go with Republicans; we only have one option, and that is the Democrats in California. So I tried to choose the best Democratic candidate I think will help our community here. But year by year, it turned out very bad. I want to see Americans go in the right direction. California is definitely in the wrong direction. I decided I want to vote for Donald Trump in the last election.”

“People automatically assume that people of color should be Democrats.”

Allen Chin, 51, is the owner of a charter boat business: “I was an Obama voter. I was fooled by his rhetoric. I grew up in San Francisco. That’s the place I love. It just turned downhill. Homelessness, and the feces, and the needles, and the drug use and and all the politicians not doing anything about it and just throwing money. I don’t know where that money is actually going.

People automatically assume that people of color should be Democrats. They need to open their eyes to what’s really happening in this country. It doesn’t matter what color you are. You know what your background is. You should be standing for the side that’s for this country.”

“We just don’t want Democrats to continue.”

Tammy Li, 50, is a business manager: “My opinion started turning when I used to work for 7-Eleven. I became a franchisee, and that’s when I started to feel there’s something going on. In 2014, there was a law passed called Proposition 47: If people steal less than $950, you can’t really prosecute them as felons. We got impacted almost right away. The crime goes up; we got shoplifted left and right. When we try to call the police, a lot of times we’re told, ‘Well, there’s not much to do.’

It took me a little while, but this time I supported Trump. We may not know that Trump can really turn everything around. We just don’t want Democrats to continue.”

“We are pragmatic people. The loyalty to a certain party is not as important as what is good for our country.”

James Zhan, 58, is an engineer: “We felt that the party is really for equal results rather than equal opportunities. Asian Americans felt very strongly that their kids get penalized as being Asian Americans. In order to get into an Ivy League school, you have to be better than students from other races.

I am still adopting an open-minded approach, basically a wait-and-see approach. I may identify with the Republican Party at this time, but we are pragmatic people. The loyalty to a certain party is not as important as what is good for our country.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. On the heels of Mr. Obama’s sweeping victory in 2008, the Democratic Party saw the multiracial coalition that elected him as a virtual electoral guarantee. Indeed, an estimated 80 percent of voters of color cast their ballots for Mr. Obama in 2012, as the share of white eligible voters declined in all 50 states from 2000 to 2018.

At his second inauguration, themed “Faith in America’s Future,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of an estimated million people that “America’s possibilities are limitless.”

Yet behind the confident pronouncements of the 2012 election and the faith in demography as destiny, a different reality was coming into view.

That same year, my colleagues and I were researching the ways the 2008 financial meltdown and the myriad of housing and other crises it caused were sowing discontent in the Democrats’ multiracial coalition. Already in our research we noticed how conservatives were directing the frustrations of those suffering these crises at institutions and public workers instead of corporations and Wall Street. The Democratic message that hope and possibility were limitless and the country’s best days were ahead was crashing on the shoals of grim economic conditions and a growing sense of isolation, loneliness and despair. A rift was forming, one that only grew wider as the years wore on.

In this moment of collapsing trust among its multiethnic voter base, the party’s commitment to progressive causes like L.G.B.T. rights and racial equality have become the target of attacks from the right. Voters like Tammy Li in San Francisco, whose frustrations with the Democrats stem from the break-ins and shopliftings at the 7-Eleven franchise she owned there, began engaging with the right-wing social critique once she found herself in Republican circles. “I’m a minority myself,” she told me, “but just because you’re L.G.B.T.Q., you have more rights over my rights?”

Democrats and progressive advocacy groups remain mired in a debate about whether they need to tack right to stem the hemorrhaging of voters of color to the G.O.P., or double down on the agenda of racial and economic liberalism that originally built the party’s base among minorities. What I’ve found in my conversations is that the forces moving multiracial voters rightward are more often rooted in economic vulnerabilities.

The Latino community’s changing conditions help explain this shift on social views in nonwhite voter groups. In 1960, there were an estimated six million Latinos in the United States, predominantly from Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico. In the years following, most identified as Catholic and remained concentrated in the Southwest, South Florida, and a handful of cities in the Northeast and in Chicago. In 2007, 55 percent of Latinos in the United States had been born outside of the country. With some notable exceptions — like the Cuban American community in Florida — Latinos tended to vote in lockstep with the Democratic Party.

But by 2022, the Latino population had exceeded 63 million. Latinos had built longstanding communities in most states, and a large majority had been born in this country. Under 45 percent identified as Catholic, while 15 percent described themselves as evangelical Protestants, in churches that make conservative views on abortion, same-sex marriage and other social issues central to their beliefs. How they vote could change the trajectory of America’s political landscape.

“They always told
us the Democrats
are for the people,
for the little guy,
for the Mexicans,
for Blacks,
for poor people.
They were going to take care of us, they were going to make things better for us.

Then it was the constant support of abortion, the constant need to talk about race, the need to identify yourself as a gay Hispanic or gay Mexican American. No, I am an American. I happen to be gay. I happened to believe in God. I don’t fit the norm. And when I finally realized that I’m not a cookie-cutter type person, I let my freak flag fly. I just turned my back towards them because I felt the Democrats turned their back towards me.

Once I started looking stuff up and then I started listening to Trump talk, I was like, no, it doesn’t sound like a Republican. Definitely not a Democrat. Maybe I can get behind this guy. I don’t consider myself a Republican. I am a Trump supporter.”

Sam Gonzales, 50, is an office manager.

For Latinos in the Rio
Grande Valley — many
of them immigrants
themselves — the crisis
at the border has
complicated their views
on Democratic
immigration policies.

“The border definitely got worse, and reality set in.”

Alexis Uscanga, 21, is the president of the Rio Grande Valley College Republicans: “I had seen someone run across our campus parking lot, drenched in water, and I was just like, ‘Oh gosh, did I just see someone cross?’ The border definitely got worse, and reality set in. I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, like, no, Trump was right.’

I began to volunteer and intern for Congresswoman Mayra Flores. She’s someone that made me the outspoken Republican that I am today. Whenever you think of the Republican Party, you think about rich old white people. And that’s why I mostly stayed silent, just because I didn’t see a lot of outspoken Hispanics until Mayra Flores came along.”

“A lot of us have relatives across the border. But those that are here have come in legally.”

Yolanda Gonzalez, 72, is a restaurant owner: “I was brought up as a Democrat. My mother was a strong Democrat. A lot of us have relatives across the border. But those that are here have come in legally. It’s cost them. They saw all the benefits they were giving those who had come illegally. I have employees where they do get benefits, and they were getting cut because of the illegals that were coming in. That was hurting everybody.

I was not a big Trump supporter back in 2020. The man grew on me. He talks to us like he’s talking to us directly.”

“We have laws in this country, and you can’t come to the country breaking the law.”

Luis Cabrera, 47, is a pastor: “Down here in South Texas, I got a rude awakening when I started pastoring. I started noticing that a lot of the Christians down here are Democrats.

I’ve had to do a lot of serious phone calls with pastors, telling them, listen, there’s an immigration reform being done, nothing’s going to change right now. Like, if you have families in your communities, in your churches that came here in the last four years illegally, they’re running a big risk if they get caught.

But we have laws in this country, and you can’t come to the country breaking the law. There are pastors that are illegals in this county. They are undocumented pastors of churches, and I’ve told them straight out, ‘Pastor, how can you break the law and preach the Gospel?’ It doesn’t make sense.”

“Before my dad went into Border Patrol, we were Democrat.”

Celena Cisneros, 25, is a receptionist: “We were raised on the Democrat thoughts that we should allow people in, being able to help those in need, even if they’re coming from a different country. Before my dad went into Border Patrol, we were Democrat.

It started with my father going into Border Patrol, seeing what’s going on on our southern border and talking to us, informing me, my brother and my sister, the importance of why certain people can’t come in and why they have to take precautions on the border. For him, he wants to keep his family safe. So that’s the lifestyle I grew up with from the age of 12 all the way to now 25.

When I was in college in Brownsville, a lot of people were more quiet about politics. We got a lot of individuals telling us, ‘I support what you guys do, but I don’t want to join because I fear that it’s going to affect me in the future. A professor is going to find out, or their friends are going to find out.’”

While these seismic demographic and cultural changes were already pushing nonwhite voters away from the Democratic Party, an iconoclast emerged: Donald Trump.

In 2016, Mr. Trump’s comments about minorities — he called them “drug lords” and “murderers” — caused uproar even within the Republican Party. Yet Mr. Trump’s magnetic appeal posited a different path for the right: Moving even further rightward appealed to the groups he was seemingly denigrating.

It flew in the face of decades of Republican policy. After 1964, the party was mostly content to cede local elections in multiracial urban areas to the Democrats. The national G.O.P. made a strategic decision to abandon most electoral appeals and connections to minority communities. Sally Bradshaw, then a Republican strategist in Florida, explained after the 2012 election, “Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents and many minorities think Republicans don’t like them or don’t want them in our country.” After a second momentous loss to Mr. Obama, a G.O.P. “autopsy report” recommended embracing a redesign of the immigration system and making a concerted effort to soften the party’s tone toward nonwhite voters.

Mr. Trump mocked the report when it was released. Instead, he not only doubled down on racial epithets, but paired them with a different vision of politics altogether. His “burn it down” style of politics rang true for nonwhite voters who were caught in the maelstrom of compounded financial and social crises, feeling left behind not only by Democrats but by the political establishment in general. Many of the voters I have spoken to say they’re not Democratic or Republican — they are Trump supporters.

Mr. Trump’s vision of political disruption and its appeal to nonwhite voters have propelled the party to overhaul its entire approach to minorities. Now, conservatives are investing tens of millions of dollars in such efforts. Right-wing advocacy groups including Turning Point USA, America First Legal and Americans for Prosperity have embraced their own forms of identity politics.

Attendees at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix in December.

Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

When I visited Turning Point’s AmericaFest conference last December, I spoke with several young working-class Black women who were part of Blexit, an effort by the far-right Black commentator Candace Owens to encourage Black voters to quit the Democratic Party. The women I met helped organize “liberation shows” to reach other Black college students: events with music, speakers and debates that reject the victim narrative that Black conservatives feel has been foisted on them by the left. These events are not necessarily top-down attempts at Republican outreach; they are a grassroots expression of conservatism firmly rooted in Black culture.

The first six months of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has been marked by breathtaking attacks on civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, ham-fisted speculations that D.E.I. policies caused an aviation disaster, terrifying deportation raids, devastating cuts to social welfare programs, an upheaval in immigration and asylum policies, and flirtation with ethnonationalist groups in Europe and South Africa — hardly the ingredients of a multicultural future.

Yet so far, among the voters I interviewed, there is little evidence of buyer’s remorse. Even if they may not embrace all the far-reaching edicts emanating from the White House, they are also not inclined to speak up for the institutions Mr. Trump is threatening to dismember. Their political worldview is far more heterodox, guided less by ideological rigidities and more by their aspirations to build lives of dignity for themselves and their communities.

Between the choice of defending a prevailing order that has left so many vulnerable and exhausted, and joining a movement that promises insurgency, fun and belonging (for some), they’re choosing the new possibilities they see on the right.

These voters may sour just as easily on the G.O.P. if its insurgent rhetoric fails to make tangible improvements in their lives. But few are likely to return to a Democratic Party bogged down in discussions about brand and identity that seem to offer little possibility of addressing the material crises and conditions shaping their lives.

At AmericaFest, weeks before Mr. Trump began his second term, I met a 25-year-old Black Blexit member named Deja Davis. Committed and idealistic, she projected a strong sense of racial identity and pride. She told me she and the other Black conservatives she works with “care so deeply about our community.” They were setting up chapters of conservative groups at historically Black colleges and hosting community events. “I believe the Black community can do anything,” she told me.

When I began this work, it was difficult to imagine people of color like Ms. Davis, whose racial identity feels to her in no way out of line with her political one, becoming a major conservative political force in our country. Yet, with thousands of voters like her at the Turning Point conference, that’s exactly where we are.

For people like Ms. Davis, optimism and hope for the future comes from the right, not the left. Their racial identity is still at the core of their political beliefs — if anything, so much of what these voters have told me comes from a pointed concern for their communities. But their political decisions are driven more by the realities their racial communities face: collapsing social structures, economic uncertainties and a sense that the status quo is untenable.

Absent a solution to these core problems, appealing to disaffected voters of color on their racial identity alone has rung hollow. Grappling with the complexity of their frustrations, anxieties and hopes will determine the next political chapter of this country.

Opinion | Obama Won Record Numbers of Nonwhite Voters. This Is How the Democrats Lost Them.

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