Republicans Lose Ground With Latino Voters After Trump’s 2024 Gains

A year after President Donald Trump’s reelection, Republicans are seeing the significant gains they made with Latino voters in 2024 begin to erode. Recent election results and new polling show a noticeable shift, suggesting that Democrats may be regaining ground ahead of next year’s midterms.

In 2024, President Trump narrowed the national Latino vote gap to just 5 points, driven largely by widespread concerns over inflation and economic hardship. At the time, Latino voters were more likely than any other demographic group to cite the economy as their top issue, with many reporting worsening financial conditions since 2020.

But polling from late 2025 shows a dramatic reversal. Latino approval of Trump’s job performance has fallen from 41 percent in February to just 20 percent in CNN’s latest survey. That 21-point drop outpaces declines among Black, White and overall American voters. Latinos are also more likely than the general population to say the economy is in poor shape, and 75 percent believe Trump’s policies have worsened conditions.

Immigration has also become a flashpoint. Seventy-nine percent of Latinos now say Trump has gone too far on deportations, up sharply from earlier in the year. At the same time, the Republican Party’s favorability rating among Latinos has fallen from 26 percent in March to 16 percent.

Those trends were reflected in the November 2025 elections. Latino voters supported Democratic gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey by at least a two-to-one margin. In California, 71 percent of Latinos backed a Democratic-supported redistricting measure. Even Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 showed signs of breaking away, with higher defection rates than Trump voters overall.

Looking ahead to the 2026 midterms, Democrats currently hold a sizable advantage with Latino voters. CNN’s October poll found that Latinos prefer a Democratic congressional candidate by a 64-to-19 margin, and 60 percent say they would not consider voting for a Republican candidate. Other national polls also show a continued Democratic lead.

While the White House argues that President Trump maintains strong support from Latino communities, early indicators suggest a more challenging landscape for Republicans than the one that helped deliver significant wins in 2024.

Credit: CNN Newsource
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