Latino Trump – A new UnidosUS poll finds that one in five Latino Texans who supported President Donald Trump in 2024 say they would not back him again if they had a redo—reflecting widespread dissatisfaction tied to cost of living, inflation, and economic focus.
Texas politics can turn on turnout, but the latest signal comes from doubt.
In a survey released Wednesday. one in five Latino Texans who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 said they would not support him again if given a redo. The poll. conducted by UnidosUS. also found that two-thirds of Latino respondents disapprove of Trump’s job performance. and the same share said they did not feel Trump and congressional Republicans were “focusing enough on improving the economy for people like you.”.
The figures land hard in a state Trump won by a wide margin two years ago. helped in large part by Latino voters who shifted to the right. Trump captured an estimated 55% of the Latino voter bloc—an apparent high-water mark for Texas Republicans after years of losing Hispanic voters by double digits.
But the new data suggest that loyalty isn’t locked in. Nearly half of Latino voters said the cost of living and inflation were the top issues shaping their view of Trump, outpacing every other concern. Immigration enforcement in cities also ranked high.
Clarissa Martínez De Castro, vice president of the group’s Latino Vote Initiative, described the emotional whiplash behind the numbers in plain terms: “The economic priorities dominate.” She added, “Some people call it ‘buyer’s remorse,’ other people ‘do over.’”
The poll comes at a moment when Democrats are pressing their case to win statewide offices for the first time since 1994. buoyed by other surveys showing Latino support for the GOP may be weakening. Those hopes are not theoretical. In January. a Democratic union machinist rode a surge in Latino support to flip a Texas Senate seat in a special election in a district that Trump carried by more than 17 points two years ago.
UnidosUS surveyed 500 registered Latino voters, collecting responses between April 27 and May 14 through phone calls, text invitations, and online panels in English and Spanish, depending on participants’ preference. Roughly 40% of the state’s population is Hispanic.
Of the 500 voters surveyed, 300 live across five of Texas’s top battleground congressional districts. Each of those districts is a Hispanic-majority seat: the 15th and 23rd Districts. which Democrats hope to flip from GOP control. and the 28th. 34th and 35th Districts—districts currently controlled by Democrats in the latter three cases—which Republicans are targeting after redrawing boundaries to make it easier for a GOP candidate to win.
In those districts, the poll found a slight majority of respondents—54%—planned to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress. Another 27% said they would support the Republican, while the rest were undecided.
On the statewide level, the poll measured competition for the U.S. Senate and the governor’s mansion. Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico led his recently cemented GOP opponent. Attorney General Ken Paxton. by a more than 2-to-1 margin among Latino voters. In the race for governor, Democratic nominee Gina Hinojosa led Gov. Greg Abbott.
The pattern echoes what Latinos have meant in Texas elections before and what appears to be changing. Election after election, Texas Democrats won the Latino vote by wide margins. Exit polls show Former President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton each won Latino voters by nearly 30 points in 2008 and 2016. respectively. But the domination began to erode by 2020. when former President Joe Biden won the bloc by 17 points—foreshadowing Trump’s striking gains four years later.
Even in the years when Latino support was stronger, Obama and Clinton lost the state overall by more than 800,000 votes.
UnidosUS also found the uncertainty that could decide November. The poll showed Talarico and Hinojosa leading among Latino voters by the same margins as those former Democratic standard-bearers, with 21% to 25% of voters undecided.
De Castro said Democrats should not treat the moment as a guarantee. “That’s why,” she said, Democrats should not “rest on their laurels” just yet. She followed that warning with the clearest message in the survey’s framing: “The reality is that Democrats are still underperforming the levels of support that they would need from Latinos to be successful.”.
When asked what elected officials should prioritize, UnidosUS found the issues Americans tend to argue about in political ads—cost of living, healthcare, and housing—are also, in this poll, “all driven by pocketbook concerns.” Immigration reform followed just behind.
On immigration. the survey found four in five Latino voters said they would support “creating an amnesty period” during which undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country “for many years and otherwise follow our laws” could apply for legal status. The poll also found that 69% of Republicans support that approach. For Republicans in Congress, the issue has been deemed a nonstarter.
Education is another flashpoint. The UnidosUS poll found 77% of Latino voters voiced opposition to a federal ban on letting undocumented children attend public schools. The idea has taken root among some Texas Republicans, setting up a potential fight when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
The strain running through all of it is economic—and it arrives with a timeline that feels close enough to politics to matter. Among Latino Trump voters in 2024, dissatisfaction is already translating into a hypothetical future where one vote no longer guarantees the next.
UnidosUS Latino voters Texas politics Donald Trump Ken Paxton James Talarico Gina Hinojosa Greg Abbott immigration reform amnesty period pocketbook concerns cost of living inflation congressional districts
That’s crazy, inflation hurts everybody though.
So like… they voted for him and now wouldn’t again because groceries got expensive? Sounds about right. But also how is this a “Latino Trump” thing and not just everyone being broke?
I don’t get it. If 55% of Latino voters went Trump then how can 2/3 disapprove? Maybe the poll is fake or only includes certain areas. Also “immigration enforcement in cities” like that’s gonna magically change inflation lol.
Cost of living always comes first, I guess. But they say “buyer’s remorse” like it’s some kind of choice… people just don’t feel it’s improving. I’m not sure about the “do over” wording either, because people are busy and don’t always vote the same. Texas can flip on turnout, and I swear every election cycle it’s something different, like whoever is in charge is always “focused” on the wrong thing.