One flaw in this theory is that non-white voters do not vote as a block and cannot be expected to remain loyal to one side of politics. As we saw in this election, the gender divide can also be just as electorally powerful as the racial divide.
Republicans used to believe they had a strong chance of appealing to Latino voters because of social issues: many Latinos were Christian, they believed, so they should be open to anti-abortion policies and a conservative message.
Important Hispanic groupings – such as Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan-Americans who have fled far-left dictatorships – have also proved natural Republican constituencies because of their aversion to politicians with even a whiff of socialism.
This time around, though, it appears that the economy was the key to Trump’s success among Latino men, who are overwhelmingly working class and have not attended college. They have been battered by high inflation over recent years and many have fond memories of the US economy under Trump before the pandemic hit.
Many Latino men were also angered by the increase in unauthorised migration across the southern border early in Biden’s term, even if they or their relatives arrived in the country illegally themselves.
This was most evident in Trump’s remarkable victory in Starr County, a community on the border in south Texas where 97 per cent of residents are Hispanic. The county had not voted for a Republican since 1892 and Hillary Clinton won almost 80 per cent of the vote there in 2016.
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In short, this group has started to vote more like white working-class men, especially as they become more integrated into American society and identify more as American workers than as migrants.
In October, a New York Times poll asked Hispanic respondents born in the US whether they felt that Trump was talking like people like them when he spoke about problems with migration in the country.
Sixty-seven per cent said they did not feel that Trump was talking about people like them, a finding that helps explain why Latino voters did not recoil en masse at Trump’s promise to deport illegal immigrants.
Trump’s “machismo” style appears to have resonated with many Latino men, who were clearly unexcited by the prospect of making Harris the first woman in the White House. This helps explain why Trump gained so much more support among them than Latina women.
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The much-hyped comments by a comedian at a Trump rally last week in which he compared Puerto Rico to a floating island of garbage did not turn the dial. Neither did endorsements for Harris by prominent Hispanic Americans such as Jennifer Lopez.
The question now is whether the rightward shift among Latino men is a one-off, Trump-specific phenomenon or whether a long-term demographic realignment is taking place in the US.
If it’s the latter, Trump’s victory may be just the beginning of a period of electoral pain for Democrats.
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