President Donald Trump won the White House in 2024 while making inroads among Latino voters despite his ardent promise of an immigration crackdown. Two years later, the reality of that crackdown is producing a backlash that could cost Republicans control of the House and Senate.
There is “mounting political worry” among Republican candidates that the president’s “heavy-handed” immigration policies will “cost the GOP” in November, said Axios. The clearest sign of that backlash: Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) unveiled a new ad warning Trump that his policies have gone too far for Latino voters. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said in the advertisement.
The 900,000 Cuban-American voters who live in Salazar’s Miami-Dade County district have long proven “reliably Republican,” said Al Jazeera, but last year’s election of Miami’s first Democratic mayor in three decades “fueled speculation of a political shift under way.” One reason for that shift: The Trump administration has deported Cubans “who have lived in the country for decades,” often to “third-party countries, where they have no ties.”
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Hispanic Americans are “losing faith in the American Dream,” American University’s Diana Orcés said at The Conversation. Two years ago, surveys showed that 52% of those voters believed that “if you work hard, you’ll get ahead” in the United States. That number has slipped to 40%. They now feel “less safe, less welcome and more like strangers in their own country” no matter whether they are Republican, Democrat or independent.
The 2024 vote was trumpeted as the beginning of a “permanent political realignment in the GOP’s favor,” Ed Kilgore said at New York magazine. But the president has since “alienated a lot of the voters” he won in that election. A poll for The Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision found Democratic candidates leading among Texas Latinos by a two-to-one margin. Another survey by Hart Research and Univision found Democrats leading among Florida Latinos by 13 percentage points. A Democratic victory in November “will owe a lot to Trump’s actions alienating Latinos.”
“It’s all about dignity,” León Krauze said at The Washington Post. Democrats will have to tread carefully. Latino voters broadly have “nuanced” views on immigration, and will need to be courted not just on migration issues but also with “promises of economic renewal.”
What next?
Hispanic voters have the “most voting power” in the districts where “Congress will be decided,” Juan Wulff said at VoteHub. Those voters could be a “defining force, especially in deciding the makeup of the House.”
But Latinos are “not necessarily turning Democrat,” said American Community Media. The demographic appears to be “swingy,” Equis Research’s María Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez said to the outlet. This makes those voters “one of the most consequential and unpredictable electorates in the 2026 midterms,” said ACM.
