An offensive joke disparaging Puerto Rico at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden just days before Election Day was seen as the impetus for Puerto Rican voters on the mainland – Puerto Ricans living on the island can’t vote for U.S. president – to rush to the polls and cast their ballots. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris happened to be campaigning in the swing state of Pennsylvania that day specifically talking about a plan for Puerto Rico and also reaching out to Puerto Ricans. The Keystone State has the fourth-largest Puerto Rican community in the US, making up about 8% of the state’s population.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliff’s comment about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage” during the rally was accompanied by other slurs against Latinos as well as Blacks, Jews and others. It was immediately criticized by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and other elected officials, and several prominent Puerto Ricans – Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, Jennifer López, among others – immediately jumped on the Harris bandwagon and publicly expressed their support for the Harris/Walz ticket.

And that’s exactly what it was, a bandwagon of too little too late, say some observers as the election showed a completely different result. In Pennsylvania, Trump held Harris’ share of the Latino vote to 57%, a 21-point drop from 2020. And in Florida, Trump handily won Osceola County, which has the state’s largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans. In Puerto Rico itself, longtime Trump supporter Jeniffer Gonzalez won the governor’s race.

Can it be that despite the outrage in the media, the comments made no difference at all with Boricua ballots?

“Let's finally put to rest, that the Latino vote, it's not a monolith. There is no ‘Latino vote’ anymore. Let’s move on from that and start looking at the differences, whether it’s country of origin, demographics, or gender. It’s something mainstream media doesn’t take seriously,” says Julio Varela, founder of The Latino Newsletter and an MSNBC contributor. “They tend to overlook those complexities. As Latino political journalists, we’ve been saying this for years. We’re not one bloc but it’s like all of a sudden we’re discovered. We’re not understood yet as a community. The working class, for instance, has gotten more Latino. And among some Latino men there’s more of an identification with American male culture beyond your latinidad identity.

And on top of that, “everything about Puerto Rico felt late,” says Varela.“There is a very simplistic take on the Latino community going on.”

Varela adds in a recent column for MSNBC.com that “Trump exploited that ‘us versus them’ mentality that has long existed among Latinos in this country, especially among those who are more assimilated, more English-dominant and who were born in the U.S. He also masked his fearmongering of Latinos seeking entry into the country with praise for many Latinos who are already here. ‘The Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial,’ Trump said during a Univision interview last year.”

Democratic strategist Federico de Jesús agrees that the Democrats were “Johnny-come-lately” on the Latino vote. “I’ve been saying this for years, you have to have a permanent presence in the Latino community, you have to have a permanent presence in Spanish and bilingual media, and you have to have a simple, easy-to-understand culturally competent message. Republicans do that and Democrats don’t---that’s the bottom line. Over the summer the Trump campaign had a Latino office in Reading, Pennsylvania, and it wasn’t until a week before the election that Harris went to a Puerto Rican restaurant to roll out a plan about Puerto Rico,” de Jesús tells LATINO Magazine. “Democrats can’t keep waiting until the last minute to make an effective outreach campaign to Latinos. We are a diverse group, not just a brown group; it's a multi-racial ethnic group. To assume you’re in this tiny box called “brown people” is offensive to Hispanics, and Democrats don’t get that. There’s a bit of paternalistic neglect. The Harris campaign did a fabulous job with outreach to the Puerto Rican community, but it was the last week of the campaign.”

De Jesús and other observers say to pin the blame for the Trump victory on a greater number of Latinos – especially Latino men – who voted Republican is simplistic. “The scapegoating of Hispanic voters without looking at the mistakes and faulty tactics is very myopic and frankly, offensive,” says de Jesús.

“Latinos barely even voted 6% of the electorate for men and Latinas each,” adds California author and Air Force veteran Graciela Tiscareño-Sato. “Meanwhile, 71% of the electorate (white men and white women) both majorities voted for authoritarianism. So now the conversation is about the tiny numbers of Black and Brown voters so white voters aren’t blamed. This is an obvious ploy to again blame Latinos for what the white voters did. It’s the 71% of the electorate, white voters, who are the bringers of authoritarianism to our Democratic republic. Blaming Black and Brown voters is scapegoating when it’s the Black and Brown people who are going to be suffering [in a second Trump administration]. People are focused on the wrong demographic.”

Noreen Sugrue of the Latino Policy Forum in Chicago says the Republicans had a much simpler message. “One mistake both [Hillary] Clinton and Harris made was to tell voters that yes, things are bad and that they are going to be fixed. They told voters that everyone had to work to make things better. Implicit in that is that everyone has some responsibility for how bad things are and we are all tasked with working together. Latinos, working-class families are already working hard, they do not want another job. Trump told people he would fix it and it would be better,” says Sugrue.

“When you get a new HVAC system the guy who installs it does not ask for your help or imply you have some responsibility for the system not working.

People, especially those in the working class, were hiring someone to run the government and fix problem, not delegate to voters more work. Harris, like Clinton, wanted to create a solutions society/community, Trump wants to take it off people’s plates and let them live their lives.”

To say race and misogyny didn’t play a part in the final outcome would be not telling the truth, adds Democratic strategist Melisa Díaz: “I think a lot of men had doubts about a woman leading our country, regardless of the qualifications of the vice president. It was an emotional vote, it was something that wasn’t rational. It didn’t matter how much you explained to the men her qualifications, her plans, what she wanted to do, there were Latino men who had serious doubts about women leading the country and there was little one could do to counter that. She was a very capable woman but there was nothing that was going to counter the opinion some Latino men had about her. Some of the Latino men supported Trump because of his macho image, tough guy kind of rhetoric. And they got stuck on that image of the strong guy rather than looking at the qualifications of both candidates. You have a group of voters who aren’t looking at the facts, aren’t looking at the data, and basically making a choice based on gender.”

“It is heartbreaking,” says retired police officer Emilio Martínez, born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City, who voted for Harris.

“But a lot of Latinos were not ready to elect a female president, yes, some voted on economic issues, but the gender part and the race part, have a lot to do with it. I’m especially disappointed in the Puerto Ricans (who voted for him) particularly after the comments that the comedian made about Puerto Rico and the way Trump treated the island after Hurricane María. Even though my parents came here legally we were treated as immigrants; we struggled, we worked hard, we were discriminated against. I sympathize with the immigrant community. I just can’t comprehend why you would vote for someone like that. And being from New York, I know what Trump is about. Young Latinos, young Latino men don’t sympathize with the immigrant community, they say they’re American. And some say hey we are here legally and so should everyone else.”

Both de Jesús and Díaz say that the best thing the Democratic Party can do is not wait until election season to do Latino voter outreach. “Start right now with communicating achievements, communicate what the Democrats believe in, and what Democrats have done for Latinos in this country and people in general, communicate what we want to do moving forward. Keep getting the message out and keep building on that message. Don’t start the outreach just because Donald Trump won the election. Make it permanent and constant.”