Hispanic Republican voters appear to be turning on President Trump – with a majority indicating that the commander in chief’s policies have been “harmful” to Latinos, according to a new poll.
The Pew Research Center survey of nearly 5,000 Latino adults, released Monday, found Hispanics, including Republicans, are far more critical of Trump’s second term than his first – and the president’s support among the key voting bloc is eroding as his latest stint in the White House progresses.
Overall, 78% of Hispanics rated the Trump administration’s policies as harmful to Latinos – up from 69% in 2019.
Among just Hispanic Republicans, 55% said Trump’s policies have been harmful – a 17 percentage point increase from the president’s first term, when only 38% of Hispanic Republicans suggested Trump’s agenda was hurting Latinos.
Hispanic Republicans have also soured on the president’s immigration agenda – marked by a ramp-up in arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants and federal law enforcement and troops sealing off the southern border.
About half, 47%, indicated Trump is doing “too much” when it comes to deportations, a nearly 20 point jump from the 28% who thought the president was overdoing it in March.
Hispanic Trump voters overwhelmingly continue to approve of the president’s job performance, but the president’s 81% support from MAGA Latinos is down from the 93% approval he had at the start of his second term, the poll found.
When reached for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson touted Trump’s second-term accomplishments and said the president “will continue delivering” for Americans.
“In a short time, President Trump has already delivered on many of the promises he was elected to enact, but there will always be more to accomplish,” Jackson told The Post.
“He’s secured the border; tackled Biden’s inflation crisis; lowered drug prices; ended taxes on tips, overtime, and social security; cooled inflation; deported criminal illegal aliens; implemented important reforms putting American workers first; and more,” she added. “Every single day he’s working hard to continue fulfilling the many promises he made and he will continue delivering.”
Jaime Florez, the Republican National Committee’s Hispanic communications director, blamed Trump’s lagging poll numbers on the way the media has covered the administration’s immigration crackdown and the “complete disaster” the Biden administration wrought on the economy.
“I think that one of the reasons why some Hispanics are not very happy with the president has to do with the coverage – the biased coverage — some media is doing about the policy of deporting illegal immigrants,” Florez said.
“The perception people have is completely negative,” the RNC spokesman said of Trump’s immigration policy. “This is nothing different from what happened in other administrations. You know, there were more deportations during the Obama administration than they were during the first Trump administration, but the perception is that Trump is anti-immigrant, which is not a fact.”
On the economy, Florez said Hispanics, like all Americans, “want prices to go down,” but they may not be coming down “as fast as expected” under Trump.
“It’s not a matter of if it’s happening or it’s not happening,” he said of prices. “It is the speed that people are concerned about.”
The good news for Trump in the Pew Research Center survey, conducted in October, is that Hispanic Republicans were far more satisfied with the state of the economy under him than former President Joe Biden.
The share of Hispanic Republicans describing the US economy as excellent or good has more than doubled since last year – 19% to 40%.
Additionally, 39% of Hispanic Republicans indicated that since Trump took office, his policies have improved economic conditions – higher than those who said Trump’s policies made conditions worse (31%) or have had no effect (29%).
Trump’s huge gains with Hispanics helped propel him to victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, but the Pew Research Center survey is the latest in a string of unfavorable Latino-centered polls for the president.
Last week, CNN data expert Harry Enten expressed shock at one of the outlet’s surveys pegging Trump 38 points underwater on the issue of immigration compared to October 2024 – when Latino voters gave Harris only a slight, 2 percentage point edge over Trump on immigration.
“Whatever Donald Trump is doing in office in the minds of Latinos, it is not working,” Enten said. “They have turned against him in massive, massive numbers.”
