Latino voters, particularly those in South Texas, are receiving renewed attention ahead of the November midterm elections as polling indicates that President Donald Trump has lost support among a constituency that helped return him to the White House in 2024.
Trump won an estimated 48% of Latino voters nationally in 2024, his strongest performance with the group. His gains were especially dramatic along the Texas-Mexico border, where he carried several heavily Hispanic counties that had supported Democrats for generations.
But those gains have not necessarily produced a lasting Republican realignment.
A bipartisan UnidosUS survey released in May found that 67% of registered Latino voters in Texas disapproved of Trump’s job performance. Twenty percent of his 2024 Latino supporters said they would not vote for him again. Respondents most frequently attributed their dissatisfaction to inflation and the cost of living, followed by immigration enforcement, jobs and wages, and the war with Iran.
Trump will not be on the midterm ballot, making the central question whether that dissatisfaction will affect Republican congressional candidates. Equis Research found that 85% of Texas Latinos who supported Trump in 2024 still backed a Republican congressional candidate, while 10% had moved to a Democrat.
That finding also presents a challenge for Democrats. Latino support for the party has recovered from its 2024 low but has not returned to earlier levels. Equis cautions that South Texas primary results and individual polls should not be treated as evidence of a completed partisan shift.
Political consultant and longtime Latino-vote analyst Mike Madrid describes these voters as politically available rather than reliably Democratic. Their decisions, he argues, are being driven less by party loyalty than by affordability, unease over aggressive deportation tactics and frustration with the Iran war.
Guest:
Mike Madrid is a political consultant specializing in Latino-vote analysis.
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This interview will be recorded live on Tuesday September 8, 2026, at 12:00 p.m.
