LEWISBURG, Pa. — Latino voters could be the most critical swing voting bloc in November’s midterm elections, and a Bucknell University political science professor who has studied Latino voting behavior for nearly a decade says both parties may be asking the wrong questions about what will move them.
Bucknell University Professor Derek Wakefield, political science, says Latino voters are more responsive to economic conditions than any other major group of American voters — making inflation, jobs and household finances potentially decisive issues this fall.
“Latinos are by far the largest group of swing voters in the country,” Wakefield says. “When Latinos believe inflation is rising, they punish whoever sits in the White House, and they do it about two and a half times more frequently than White voters do.”
Wakefield points to the dramatic shift in the 2024 presidential election, when Donald Trump won about 42% of the Latino vote — the highest Republican share in two decades. His research finds that those swings are driven less by immigration or identity politics than by voters’ perceptions of the economy.
“If the historical pattern holds, the Latino share of the vote will swing harder than any other group, in the direction that the price of eggs and rent now point,” Wakefield says.
Wakefield’s research on Latino voting behavior has appeared in the scholarly journals Political Behavior and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. He can address what makes Latino voters uniquely influential this November, why their votes have shifted so dramatically between parties and what Democrats and Republicans may be getting wrong in their efforts to win them. You can learn more about his research at derekwakefield.com.
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CONTACTS: Derek Wakefield, 570-577-3479, dw043@bucknell.edu; Mike Ferlazzo, 570-577-3212, 570-238-6266 (c), mike.ferlazzo@bucknell.edu