Latino Voters, Once Solidly Democratic, Split Along Economic Lines

A few miles from the Las Vegas Strip, in a working-class neighborhood of one-story homes and scattered palm trees, Vania Oronoz is pushing her husband to give up his habit of voting for Democrats.

Mrs. Oronoz and many of her neighbors are shifting toward the Republican Party, a pattern that’s being replicated across the country. The move has been especially pronounced among working-class Latinos, whose votes have the potential to reshape the political parties in the same way that the movement of white, working-class voters has made them a pillar of the Republican Party.

Mrs. Oronoz, a 44-year-old immigrant from Mexico, runs a taco business with her husband and backed President Joe Biden in 2020 when she cast her first vote as a U.S. citizen. She said she has become disenchanted with Democrats over the state of inflation and school quality, as well as the party’s failure to approve a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Instead she is putting her support behind GOP candidates in this fall’s election, including the Republican trying to defeat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the only Latina ever elected to the Senate.