Trump’s Latino Gains: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

DALLAS—Eleven years ago, when he glided down his gilded escalator in his eponymous New York City high-rise, Donald Trump astonished – not to mention appalled – veteran political watchers by characterizing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug mules.

The proximate context for Trump’s pejorative generalizations was to build support for his unlikely presidential candidacy, an ultimately successful gambit built around various populist positions, most memorably his “big beautiful wall” on the southern U.S. border – a project Trump said was needed to keep out undesirables.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said that day. “They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Notwithstanding the “good people” caveat, it was an overtly xenophobic pitch that millions of Americans happened to agree with. Yet, it was also risky: Although U.S. border enforcement specifically, and immigration control generally, were a hot mess, Hispanics were (and remain) the nation’s fastest-growing voting bloc. Gratuitously insulting them didn’t seem too savvy.

But Trump won in 2016. He won again in 2024 (after Joe Biden essentially opened the border) with the most surprising demographic development being the surging support for Trump and congressional Republican candidate among Latinos.

A new poll reveals how quickly it has disappeared. A Hart Research/Univision poll, first reported by Axios, shows that in every part of the country Latinos are dissatisfied with Trump’s performance in office the second time around.

What is the source this disillusionment? Even though candidate Trump vowed mass deportations if he won in 2024, his administration’s belligerent and often bloody immigration enforcement efforts are clearly a problem, as 62% of Hispanics disapprove of his immigration policies. An even bigger factor are kitchen table issues: About two-thirds of Hispanics disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. This would be bad news for any president.

The disaffection has filtered down to GOP congressional candidates, who are decidedly underwater with Hispanics. This is shaping up as a problem in Texas, where Trump assembled his party this week to try and stop the hemorrhaging, but even in the Republican bastion of Florida, where Cuban Americans have long formed a human firewall. In Florida, the Hart Research/Univision poll reports that Latino voters in two swing districts that were once evenly split on Trump are now -13 percentage points for the GOP.

Axios also reported:

"In three Texas congressional districts — one on the Mexico border, another in suburban Fort Worth and another in the Austin-San Antonio corridor — Latino voters went from a self-reported 44-44 split in the 2024 presidential race to 56-36 in Democrats' favor today."

In 1966, when running for governor of California against a tired Democratic incumbent, Ronald Reagan would ask Mexican-American crowds, “Ya basta?” which translates loosely to “Had enough?”

Reagan reprised that catchphrase in 1980 while campaigning for president here in Texas. It worked, too. Jimmy Carter had carried Texas in 1976, but he couldn’t come close against Reagan four years later. Texans indeed had had enough of Carter, who managed only to split the Hispanic vote nationally with Reagan.

If Trump, who is telling audiences here to pretend his name is on the ballot this year, could come close to replicating Reagan’s feat, Nov. 3, 2026, would be a very good night for the Republican Party. But this new poll suggests a much different outcome is looming.