Whether the midterm elections prove to be a devastating wipeout for Republicans largely depends on Hispanic voters — a voting bloc that shifted rightward in 2024 but now appears to be slipping through the GOP’s fingers.
Amid bad polling, Republican incumbents in predominantly Hispanic districts are distancing themselves from the administration’s immigration crackdown. But they have “misread this whole situation,” said Steve Cortes, who led Hispanic outreach for President Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
“Hispanics are overwhelmingly a working-class population … and so inflation hits much harder,” said Mr. Cortes, who polls voters through his group, the League of American Workers. “Gas prices are especially punishing to Hispanic workers, especially Hispanic men, and that’s where most of the gains were made [in 2024], and that’s where we’re seeing most of the losses now.”
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He warned Republicans in tough races against parroting “the open borders nonsense.”
UnidosUS, an organization that studies Hispanic voter participation, found in a May poll that immigration is the fifth most important issue for voters — behind inflation, jobs/wages, healthcare and housing.
Furthermore, in a September New York Times/Siena Poll, immigration was among President Trump’s strongest issues with Hispanics. While a mere 18% of Hispanics approved of the president’s handling of the economy, 26% approved of his handling of immigration.
Still, Republican candidates are making striking statements distancing themselves from Mr. Trump’s deportation sweeps.
Rep. Monica De La Cruz — a Texas Republican who won her predominantly Hispanic South Texas district by more than 14 points in 2024 — is now in a toss-up race according to political forecasters.
“Monica puts people over politics,” says a constituent in a new ad who praises Ms. De La Cruz for helping her husband get released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Her campaign manager, James Shook, said Ms. De La Cruz is aligned with the president’s deportation policies, and the ad simply shows “the kind of casework that congressional offices do every day helping constituents deal with federal concerns.”
GOP Rep. Maria Salazar directly confronts Mr. Trump in an ad in her Florida district.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she says in the ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
Maria Cardona, a Democratic consultant who advised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Hispanic voter outreach, sees Ms. Salazar’s ad as proof the immigration issue is helping drive Hispanics away from Republicans.
“She saw the whopping swing away from Trump that is happening … and now she’s fighting for her political life,” said Ms. Cardona. “Trump talked about mass deportations all the time [in 2024], but he also talked about focusing on the most criminal and the most violent.”
Whatever is swaying Hispanic voters, the movement demonstrates that neither party has a solid grip on them.
“What 2024 showed is not that Hispanics are all of a sudden Republican. It showed that they’re now swing voters,” said Alfonso Aguilar, the director of the Hispanic Leadership Coalition at the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute. “Perhaps in the past they were supporting Democrats two-to-one. … That era has ended.”
Although he acknowledged that the polling captures frustration with war-related inflation, Mr. Aguilar said it does not capture the full picture of what Hispanics are thinking. He said that Hispanics also have benefited from rising wages and tax cuts under Mr. Trump and are concerned by the rise of socialism in the Democratic Party.
Christian Martinez, the Hispanic press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee, also said Republicans are earning Hispanic votes by “fighting for lower costs, safer communities, a secure border and the American Dream.”
“Democrats still think Hispanics are their political property,” he said.
Mike Madrid, a political strategist who split with the Republican Party due to his opposition to Mr. Trump and now tracks Hispanic voter trends, agreed that immigration is “nowhere near” as much of a political driver as the economy.
He also said the Hispanic voters’ “wild swings” will continue as long as neither party can fix the high cost of living that plagues the working class, of which Hispanics make up the fastest-growing segment.
“That’s going to keep happening,” he said.
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