Hispanic voters who helped re-elect Donald Trump in 2024 are discontent with his second-term economic and immigration policies, according to recent polling – indicating they may not be willing to support the president’s party in the midterm elections.
Despite a record number of Hispanic voters casting their ballots for the Republican president, more than 65% said they are displeased with Trump’s handling of his job and 78% said they would prefer to see the Democratic party in control of Congress, according to a September poll from the New York Times/Siena University.
“When we ask voters, ‘OK, what is shaping your opinion about the president?’ The cost of living was number one, number two was immigration enforcement and deportation in US cities, number three is back to the economy – wages,” Clarissa Martinez De Castro, the vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, said.
Frustration with the consequences of the administration’s current policies are driving Latino voters away from Republicans, said Mike Madrid, a campaign consultant, author and teacher who has been studying Latino voting patterns for 35 years.
“There’s no renewed affinity or love for the Democratic party. They’re just extremely upset and disillusioned and angry, frankly, with Donald Trump,” Madrid said.
“So they’re gonna leave the Republicans for the exact same reasons that they left the Democrats two years ago,” he added.
Other polls support those findings. Approximately 63% of Hispanic respondents told a Fox News survey in September they plan to vote for the Democratic congressional candidate in their district.
In an UnidosUS poll from April/May, 54% of Hispanic voters said they would vote for the Democratic House candidate, compared with 27% who said they would favor the Republican.
The economy and cost of living are top concerns for Hispanic voters, polls show. Trump’s message of economic populism helped him get elected in 2024, but voters, including Republicans, have soured on his handling of the economy amid high inflation and rising costs.
The Iran war has pushed gas prices past $4 per gallon on average. Inflation has risen over the last year and remained stubborn at 3.4%, elevating grocery costs.
When asked about the recent polling of Hispanic voters, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said “hard-working Hispanic Americans are beginning to have some breaking room after four year of economic pain under the Democrats” and pointed to policies such as middle-class tax cuts, no tax on tips, overtime and social security and “defeating Biden’s inflation crisis”.
Schuster said Trump was “honored to receive a record level of support from Hispanic Americans that helped fuel his landslide 2024 election victory” and that the president and Republicans in Congress would “continue fighting to make everyday life more affordable for working families”.
Between October 2025 and May 2026, Hispanic voters’ favorability of Democrats in Congress increased by three percentage points, according to UnidosUS’s bipartisan poll of 3,000 Hispanic voters.
Meanwhile, favorability toward Republicans in Congress only increased by one percentage point.
Immigration is also an issue, especially since the Trump administration has deployed federal agents to Latino and Hispanic communities across the country. Some who have encountered immigration agents have accused the administration of racial profiling to target immigrants for deportation.
But immigration is not the biggest issue for Latino voters – a misconception that politicians often make.
In UnidosUS’s poll of 3,000, 17% said they wanted elected officials to prioritize increasing border security. Another 13% said they supported deporting all undocumented immigrants, regardless of how long they have been in the US.
Those who voted for Trump are part of a larger cohort of “swing” voters who have no allegiance to a specific political party. They make up roughly 40% of the Hispanic electorate and are often misunderstood by politicians, Martinez said.
“You have 40% of voters here for whom, many of them say, they don’t see the difference between the parties in terms of who really is going to be better,” Martinez said of the group.
“That tells candidates: you have homework to do, and the clock is ticking,” she added.
Republicans and Democrats have long struggled to resonate with Latino voters, Madrid said, in part because politicians often assume they know exactly what Latino voters want without doing proper outreach.
“The political structure has done a massive disservice with fake polling, with organizations that were advocating an agenda, not facts and science … and politicians that were trying to benefit from that,” Madrid, who has consulted for both Republican and Democratic campaigns, said.
Madrid and Martinez cautioned that while Latino voters appear tofavor Democratic candidates ahead of the November elections, it does not mean Democrats can – or should – count on their support in 2028.
“Latino voters themselves are changing, which is why the Latino vote has changed,” Madrid said. “And you can’t you can’t come up with a solution until you understand that.”
