Trump made inroads with Latino voters. The GOP is losing them ahead of the midterms

WASHINGTON— President Trump made historic gains with Latinos when he was re-elected last year, boosting Republicans’ confidence that their economic message is helping them make headway with a group of voters who have long leaned Democratic.

But in this week’s elections, Democrats in key states were able to reverse that shift to the right by winning back Latino support. exit polls showed.

Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia made gains in counties with large Latino populations, winning two-thirds of the states’ Latino votes. an NBC News poll.

And in California, CNN exit poll It showed that nearly 70 percent of Latinos voted in favor of Proposition 50, a Democratic redistricting initiative designed to counter Trump’s plans to reshape congressional maps in an effort to keep the GOP in control of the House of Representatives.

The results mark the first concrete example of Latino voters turning away from the GOP at the ballot box: a shift the harbinger of the latest polls As their concerns about the economy and immigration raids grow.

If this trend continues, it could spell trouble for Republicans in next year’s midterm elections, said Gary Segura, a professor of public policy, political science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA. That may be especially true in California and Texas, where both parties rely on Latino voters to pick up seats in the House of Representatives, Segura said.

“A year is a long time in politics, but the vote on Proposition 50 certainly bodes very, very well for Democrats’ ability to pass newly drawn congressional districts,” Segura said. “I think Latino voters will be really influential in the outcome.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are optimistic that Trump’s immigration crackdown and warnings about the bad economy are resonating with Latinos.

Republicans wonder to what extent the party can maintain support among Latinos without Trump. Trump in 2024 He won nearly 48% of the Latino vote nationwide — a record for any Republican presidential candidate.

Some Republicans saw this week’s trends among Latino voters as a “wake-up call.”

“The Hispanic vote is not guaranteed. Hispanics married President Donald Trump but they only date the GOP,” said Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida. he said in a social media video the day after the election. “I’m warning: If the GOP can’t get this done, we’re going to lose Hispanic votes all over the country.”

Economic problems are the main factor

Last year, Trump was able to leverage widespread disillusionment with the economy to win support among Latinos. He promised to create jobs and lower the cost of living.

However voting shows A majority of Latino voters now appear to disapprove of how Trump and the Republicans who control Congress are handling the economy. Half of Latin Americans say they expect Trump’s economic policies to leave them worse off a year from now Unidos survey It was published last week.

In New Jersey, this sentiment was exemplified by voters like Rumaldo Gomez. HE he told MSNBC He voted for Trump last year but this week voted for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

“I look at Trump differently now,” Gomez said. “The economy is not looking good”

Gomez added that she was “very sorry” about the immigration raids led by the Trump administration that are tearing apart hard-working families.

While Latino voters fear being affected by immigration enforcement, polls show they are more concerned about the cost of living, jobs and housing. The Unidos survey showed immigration ranked fifth on the list of concerns.

Democrats’ double-digit victories in New Jersey and Virginia were built on promises to reduce the cost of living while blaming Trump for their economic pain.

Marcus Robinson, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats “widened margins and flipped key districts by winning back Latino voters who knew Trump’s economy was leaving them behind.”

“These results show that Latino communities want progress, not a return to chaos and broken promises,” he said.

Republicans see a different Trump issue

GOP strategist Matt Terrill, who was then Sen’s chief of staff. During Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, he said the election results were not a referendum on Trump.

He said Latino voters are moving left because Trump is not on the ballot.

“Latino voters didn’t vote for the Republican party, Latino voters voted for President Trump,” he said last year. “Like him or not, he can mobilize voters that the Republican party has traditionally been unable to get.”

With Trump barred by the constitution from running for a third term, Republicans are wondering whether they can take away Latino votes when he is not on the ballot. Terrill believes Republicans should make affordability a top priority.

Mike Madrid, a “Never Trump” Republican and former political director of the California Republican Party, has a different theory.

“They are abandoning both sides,” Madrid said of Latinos. “They abandoned the Republican party for the same reasons they abandoned the Democratic party in November: failure to address economic concerns.”

Madrid said the economy has long been Latinos’ top concern, but both parties continue to shape the Latino political agenda around immigration.

“Latinos don’t vote for Democrats or Republicans; they vote against Democrats and Republicans,” Madrid said. “That’s a huge difference. The partisans are all looking at us as if we were some strange, exotic little creature.”

work ahead

Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor in Virginia in part because of big gains in predominantly Latino communities. One of the biggest gains was in Manassas Park, where more than 40% of residents are Latino. HE Won City by 42 points We doubled the performance of the Democrats in last year’s elections.

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist who worked on Spanberger’s Spanish-language media outreach campaign, said the shift toward Democrats occurred because Latinos believed Trump promised to lower the high cost of living and would only go after violent criminals in immigration raids.

Instead, he argued that Trump betrayed them.

Cardona said cuts to Medicaid this year in Trump’s massive spending package and reductions in supplemental nutrition assistance due to the government shutdown are sending Latino families into panic.

“What Republicans were misguided and mistakenly thought was a realignment of Latino voters turned out to be a spur of the moment,” he said. “Latinos should never be considered the primary vote.”

Political scientists warn that this week’s election results may not indicate how the races will play out a year from now.

“This is just one election, but the seeds have certainly been planted for strong Latino Democratic turnout in 2026,” said Brad Jones, a political science professor at UC Davis.

Both parties now need to explain how they expect to fulfill their promises if elected.

“They can’t just sit back and say, ‘Latinos are definitely coming back because the economy is bad and immigration enforcement is bad,’” Jones said. “The mission of the Democratic party is now to reach Latino voters in ways that are more than symbolic.”