During his 2024 election romp, President-elect Donald Trump won a stunning 46% of the Hispanic and Latino vote, per a national CNN exit poll – posting the best recorded performance among the demographic of any Republican nominee in American history.

According to the same exit poll, Trump won Latino Catholics, a group that in the past has polled as strongly Democratic, by a seven-point margin (53% to 46%) over failed nominee Kamala Harris.

Trump’s historic performance with Hispanics was further bolstered by his winning Latino men by a double-digit margin (55% to 43%) and married Latinos by three points (51% to 48%), also per CNN.

In addition, the exit poll indicated that Trump lost Latino voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by only two points – winning 47% of the demographic to Harris’ 49%.

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Harris still bested Trump by six points with Latinos overall (52% to 46%) due to her strong performances with Latina women (among whom she won 60% to 38%), Latinos 65 and over (58% to 41%), unmarried Latinos (59% to 37%), and Latinos with no religious affiliation (72% to 26%), the poll showed.

The CNN exit poll found Trump won Catholics overall by 18 points (58% to 40%) and white Catholics by a 25-point margin (61% to 35%).

Latino non-Catholic Christians, a group including Latino Protestants and/or Evangelicals, voted for Trump by 30 points (64% to 34%) per CNN’s poll.

According to Cuban American writer Giancarlo Sopo, the poll showed that Trump won all Latino Christians by a 17-point margin.

Catholics comprised 41% of the Latino electorate in 2024, per the exit poll. Non-Catholic Christians accounted for an additional 29% of Hispanic voters this year.

Non-religious Latinos – among whom Harris dominated, as previously noted – accounted for 22% of all Latino voters.

The president-elect’s margin of victory among Catholics in general was higher in the CNN exit poll compared to similar polls taken by other media sources.

As CatholicVote previously reported, other exit polls found that Trump won Catholic voters at large by varying margins between seven and 15 points.

In pre-election polling, Harris seemed to have a strong lead among Latino Catholics.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted between late August and early September indicated that Harris was winning the Hispanic Catholic vote by 31 points (65% to 34%) – a discrepancy of 38 points compared to the post-election CNN exit poll.

The same Pew survey found that Trump was polling five points higher than Harris among all Catholics – again, a significantly smaller percentage than the margin by which he won the group on election day.

However, the September survey showed that Trump was winning the support of white Catholics with 61% of their vote to Harris’ 38% – similar to the results of the CNN exit poll, which also showed Trump won 61% of the white Catholic vote.

Before Trump’s win this week, the Republican nominee who had performed the best among Hispanic voters was George W. Bush, who won 44% of the Latino vote on his way to reelection in 2004, according to Pew.

For reference, Ronald Reagan won a considerably lower 37% of the Hispanic vote during his 49-state landslide victory in 1984.

During a Thursday FOX News appearance, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, a Cuban American, weighed in on Trump coming within striking distance of becoming the first recorded Republican nominee to ever win the Hispanic vote.

“My free advice to Democrats is fire all these consultants, pollsters, and so-called experts that gave you advice on how to reach the Hispanic vote, because they don’t know jack,” Rubio said. “The truth of the matter is that Hispanic voters are not in favor of illegal immigration. They are not in favor of uncontrolled immigration into our country.”

“Hispanic voters are not in favor of high prices that makes life unaffordable,” Rubio continued. “And they’re not in favor of policies that send our jobs to other countries.”

“And you know what?” Rubio added. “Neither are most Americans.”

Harvard Associate Professor of Government Matt Blackwell wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday morning, “The ‘Latinos are voting for their own deportation’ takes are maybe a good indicator of why the left isn’t doing well with Latinos.”

LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.