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 won re-election last year, boosting Republicans’ confidence that their economic message was helping them make inroads with a group of voters who had long leaned Democratic.

But in this week’s elections, Democrats in key states managed to disrupt this rightward shift by regaining the support of Latinos, exit polls showed it.

In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats running for governor made gains in counties with large Latino populations and overall won two-thirds of the Latino vote in their states, according to an NBC News poll.

And in California, a CNN exit poll showed that about 70% 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 Republican Party’s control of the House.

The results mark the first concrete example at the polls of Latino voters turning away from the GOP – a change prefigured by a recent survey as their concerns about the economy and immigration raids grew.

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill celebrates with supporters after being elected governor of New Jersey.

(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

If the trend continues, it could cause problems 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 could be especially true in California and Texas, where both parties rely on Latino voters to help them win House seats, Segura said.

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

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

Republicans question how well the party can maintain Latino support without Trump on its ticket. In 2024, Trump won about 48% of the Latino vote nationally – a record for a 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 only date the GOP,” Republican Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida said in a social media video the day after the election. “I warned: If the Republican Party doesn’t keep its promises, we will lose the Hispanic vote across the country.”

Economic issues, a major driver

Last year, Trump successfully leveraged widespread frustration with the economy to win support among Latinos. He promised to create jobs and reduce the cost of living.

But polls show that a majority of Latino voters now disapprove of how Trump and the Republicans who control Congress are handling the economy. Half of Latinos said they expected Trump’s economic policies to make them worse off in a year, according to a Unidos poll released last week.

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

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

Gomez added that he was “very sad” about the Trump administration’s immigration raids that have divided hard-working families.

While Latino voters fear being affected by immigration control measures, polls suggest they are more concerned about the cost of living, jobs and housing. The Unidos poll showed that immigration ranked fifth as a concern.

In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats’ double-digit victories relied on promises to lower the cost of living, while blaming Trump for their economic woes.

Marcus Robinson, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats “expanded their margins and flipped key counties by winning back Latino voters who know Trump’s economy is 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 problem

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

Latino voters shifted to the left because Trump was not on the ballot, he said.

Last year, “it wasn’t Latino voters who turned to the Republican Party, it was Latino voters who turned to President Trump,” he said. “Like it or not, he is capable of attracting voters that the Republican Party traditionally does not have.”

With the Constitution barring Trump from running for a third term, Republicans are wondering if they can reclaim the Latino vote when it’s not on the ballot. Terrill believes Republicans need to make the issue of 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 parties,” Madrid said of Latinos. “They abandoned the Republican Party for the same reasons they abandoned the Democratic Party in November: not addressing economic concerns. »

The economy has long been Latinos’ top concern, Madrid said, but both parties continue to set the Latin American political agenda around immigration.

“Latinos don’t vote for Democrats or Republicans, they vote against Democrats and against Republicans,” Madrid said. “It’s a really big difference. The fans all look at us like we’re this special, exotic little creature.”

The work to come

Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor of Virginia in part thanks to large gains in communities with a large Latino component. One of the biggest gains was in Manassas Park, where more than 40 percent of residents are Latino. She won the city by 42 points, doubling Democrats’ performance in last year’s election.

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

Instead, she argued, Trump betrayed them.

Cardona said Medicaid cuts under Trump’s massive spending package this year, as well as reductions in supplemental nutrition assistance amid the government shutdown, have panicked Latino families.

“What Republicans wrongly and wrongly thought was a realignment of Latino voters turned out to be just a blip,” she said. “Latinos should never be considered a core vote.”

Political scientists caution that this week’s election results are not necessarily indicative of how elections will play out a year from now.

“It’s only one election, but the seeds have certainly been sown for strong Latino Democratic turnout in 2026,” said Brad Jones, a political science professor at UC Davis.

Now, both parties must explain how they plan to keep their promises if elected.

“They can’t sit on their laurels and say, ‘Well, the Latinos are probably coming back because the economy is bad and immigration controls are bad,’” Jones said. “The task for the Democratic Party now is to reach Latino voters in a way that is more than symbolic.”