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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks during a campaign event in Marietta, Ga., on Nov. 11, 2020. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images) Donald Trump

By Zachary Stieber June 8, 2021 Updated: June 8, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Hispanic voters shifting to the GOP stems from former President Donald Trump’s values and the Republican Party can lock in the gains provided GOP officials remain focused on the same values, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says.

Rubio, a Cuban-American, told Breitbart News that Hispanic voters in Miami swung to Trump in 2020 in part because they’re against socialism.

“These are communities made up of people who value commonsense wisdom and working class values,” Rubio said.

“That’s what their life is built on. Those are two things the left has abandoned. You hear lots of people talk about whether it’s socialism. Socialism is a part of it. Socialism is a part of the commonsense part of it. In their mind, if I were to step in the shoes of someone who maybe voted for Obama in 2012, then voted for Donald Trump in 2020, they would say to you: ‘Look, I came from a socialist country. I fled it. Why the hell would we do that here?’ It makes no sense to them.”

According to exit polls, Trump saw more support from Hispanics in 2020 than 2016. In several key areas, Hispanic votes shifted significantly. For instance, in Florida, 35 percent of Hispanics voted for Trump in 2016; in 2020, that figure was close to 50 percent, according to a CNN exit poll. Overall, Democrat Joe Biden, who won the election, won 65 percent of the Hispanic/Latino vote.

The gain among Hispanics was further seen last week, when Republicans flipped a mayoral seat in McAllen, a border city that’s approximately 85 percent Hispanic, held onto a mayoral seat in Fort Worth, and won the race for mayor in Arlington.

A poll conducted in April (pdf) on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee found that a majority of Hispanic voters said they support capitalism over socialism and worry that America is declining so much that their children will not have the same opportunities that drew them to the country in the first place.

About 50 percent of respondents said that Democrat policies end up hurting Hispanic families and generally aligned with conservatives’ views on biological males playing in women’s sports, cancel culture, and the power Big Tech holds.

“If you look at these poll numbers, Hispanics across the country are Republicans,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told reporters in Washington last month.

New Mexico Democratic political consultant Sisto Abeyta told Axios recently that Democrats need to turn their attention to areas previously believed to be solid blue.

“Democrats need to change the narrative and start talking about jobs,” Abeyta said. “They need to invest and engage and not take these districts for granted. These voters are up for grabs now.”

The shift toward the GOP among Hispanics will be permanent, Rubio told Breitbart, provided Republicans continue to focus on the values that Trump promoted.

“I think President Trump was doing a lot of things based on common sense. In their mind, it made all the sense in the world. They don’t understand why their side is against it. And then working class values—most of these people here don’t care what you do with your life, they don’t want to tell you how to live your life, who to marry, who to love, and so forth—but you’re asking them to abandon three or four thousand years of accumulated human wisdom because a handful of crazy professors have convinced people everything we knew was true is no longer true on things like gender, on this or that,” Rubio said.

“These guys just got turned off by all that, and I think it accelerated through the summer on the pandemic and the rioting and all of that. I think that shift is permanent unless we as Republicans go back to being who we used to be—then we give these people no political home.” Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieberFollow Zachary on Parler: @zackstieber