Mikie Sherill Won Latino Voters big time!
TRENTON —
On Tuesday November 4th, voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots to send Mikie Sherrill and Dr. Dale Caldwell to Trenton. A major part of their winning coalition was Latino voters — 68% of whom supported Mikie. Together, Mikie and Dale ran a campaign laser focused on economic issues at a time when a plurality of Latino voters say “economy or cost of living was the issue that mattered most to their vote” and promising to stand up to the Trump administration to protect New Jersey. That winning message, combined with Team Mikie’s “sizable investments” in Latino voter outreach and organizing, resulted in a complete reversal of any gains made by Trump and the GOP among Latino voters in 2024.
Read more about the coalition that Mikie and Dale built below:
WATCH: MSNBC
WATCH: CBS2
New York Post: New Jersey Hispanic, Latino voters swung sharply to Mikie Sherrill — wiping out 2024 GOP gains, data shows
• Recent Republican gains among New Jersey’s Latino and Hispanic voters evaporated in this year’s gubernatorial race, helping propel Rep. Mikie Sherrill to victory and sending a major warning signal to the GOP ahead of next year’s congressional midterms.
• Hispanic and Latino voters in the Garden State favored Sherrill by more than two-to-one (68% to 31%), according to an exit poll commissioned by NBC News.
• By contrast, President Trump only lost the nationwide demographic by five percentage points (51% to 46%) to Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, with some Hispanic-majority towns in New Jersey shifting toward the Republican ticket by up to 33 percentage points.
• In New Jersey municipalities that are more than 60% Hispanic, Sherrill completely wiped out the gains Trump made in 2024 — and in many cases, built on Murphy’s margin in 2021.
• Prominent Hispanic and Latino Republicans warned that future election days won’t go much better for the GOP if things don’t change.
NBC: Latino voter shifts in Tuesday’s elections alarm some Republicans
• Republicans have spent a year cheering President Donald Trump’s gains among Latino voters in November 2024. Now, Democrats’ big wins among Latino voters this week have some Republicans sounding the alarm.
• Latino voters supported the Democratic candidates this year by at least double-digit margins, according to NBC News exit polling. Latino men, who broke for Trump last year, according to the 2024 exit polls, favored the Democrats in each of the races where exit polling was conducted on Tuesday.
• In the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial contests, two-thirds of Latino voters supported the Democratic candidates.
• That support was especially pronounced in New Jersey, where Latino voters made up 10 percent of the electorate. Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill won big in areas of the state with sizable Latino populations, as she beat Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 13 points and reversed some of Trump’s gains in New Jersey.
• Pluralities of Latino voters in every state where exit polling was conducted said the economy or cost of living was the issue that mattered most to their vote. When it comes to their family finances, majorities also said they are holding steady or falling behind financially, with about a third consistently reporting they’re falling behind.
• Campos-Medina credited Sherrill’s victory among Latino voters to a message focused on “bread and butter” economic issues, and with sizable investments in Latino voter outreach and organizing.
Politico: ‘Blowout Is the Word’
• In 2024, Donald Trump made huge inroads in New Jersey by making gains with working class people, particularly among Black and Latino voters. One year later, and Sherrill helped return many of those voters to the fold through what she said was a laser-focus on issues of affordability.
• “And I think in the Democratic Party, we believe deeply that government at its best delivers for working people. And I would say that the juggernaut of a campaign I built is built on that traditional, powerful, Democratic base: working people. We saw every single county — we have 21 counties, every single county — move to the left in this race. I think we saw 22-point swings in Hudson County, a big Latino county. We saw about an 18-point swing in Passaic County, a Latino and a Black county that’s very diverse.”
• “So we saw these huge swings. And I think that’s because working people in working class suburbs or Black communities or Latino communities need government to function. They need really good schools, because that’s how we all see our kids as having great access to opportunity. Working people want to see access to really good jobs, because obviously that’s how they pay their bills. These brick-and-mortar things of building a powerful Democratic message and Democratic Party come from working people. And I think what you’re seeing in these races is a deep desire to address the needs of working people.”
NJ.com: 13 things you should know about Mikie Sherrill’s big win in N.J. governor race
• Also, there was a battle over Black and Latino voters, with Democrats worried whether those key blocs would come out for Sherrill or if Ciattarelli could peel away enough to hurt her.
• Black voters ultimately went for Sherrill 94% and Latinos 68%, according to CNN’s polling. The former figures stands is stark — very stark — contrast to an AtlasIntel poll from last week that showed Ciattarelli leading with 60% of Black voters.
• Sherrill performed better in urban areas, such as Newark and Paterson, than Murphy did in 2021. And numbers were boosted in Jersey City because of a contentious mayor’s race there.
• Actually, Sherrill carried every age, race and gender demographic but two — Ciattarelli won men and white voters.
• “All the Republican gains — Passaic, Latinos, Morris, and more — gone,“ Rasmussen wrote. ”Donald Trump giveth and Donald Trump taketh away.”
New York Times: 6 Takeaways From Democrat Mikie Sherrill’s Victory in New Jersey
• Ms. Sherrill was able to energize the Democratic coalition in New Jersey that had dominated the state for a decade, putting her on pace to match even Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s decisive 2017 victory. She ran up large margins in suburban counties like Bergen, Middlesex and Union.
• Hudson County, the densely populated urban county across the Hudson River from New York City, with a significant Latino population, improved 20 percentage points for Democrats over the 2024 margins. Essex County, home to Newark and many densely populated suburbs, improved eight points over the 2024 margins.
