Just one month before the midterm elections, Latino support for President Trump has dropped to its lowest levels during his presidency due to aggressive immigration policies targeting their communities and the high cost of living, new polls show.
Two years ago, Latino voters, swayed by his campaign promises, helped him net a second term in the Oval Office during the 2024 elections.
The polls’ results mark a stark reversal.
Significance. A Reuters/Ispos poll, which wrapped earlier this week, found that just 24% of Latino American voters approve of Trump’s performance during his second term in office. This is Trump’s lowest approval rating among the Latino community that he has held in his two presidential terms, according to Reuters.
A recent NBC/Telemundo poll ranked his approval rating as 27% among Latino voters, with 69% disapproving of his performance as president.
The poll, which was conducted between Sept. 21-28, showed that disapproval stems from personal experience in which either they or their loved ones have been impacted by Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has racially profiled many Latinos across the country.
In the poll, 27% of the respondents said that they know someone who has been brutally arrested, detained, or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last two years since the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. And 31% of respondents also said those immigration tactics have prompted them or someone close to them to start carrying legal identification out of fears of being racially profiled and wrongly abducted by ICE officers.
When asked specifically about their views on Trump’s immigration tactics, 69% of respondents disapprove of how he has recently handled immigration. Similarly, 58% disapprove of how he has handled border security.
Overlooked angle. Latino support was a vital part of helping Trump take office for his second term. In the 2024 presidential election, a national exit poll conducted by Edison Research and released by the Washington Post found that Latino male voters shifted in support of Trump. This was compared to the previous presidential election, where the demographic had previously backed former President Biden, the democratic candidate.
Power structure. Since taking office for his second term, President Trump has cracked down on both legal and illegal immigration, with many efforts targeting people from the Latino diaspora and their loved ones.
The Trump administration has been widely criticized for tactics that include using brute force – including instances where those who resist or are detained died, separating children from their parents, inhumane conditions in detention facilities, and deportation to countries where immigrants have no ties.
Additionally, 74% of Latinos polled disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy and 78% disapprove of how he has handled the cost of living, according to the NBC/Telemundo poll. Trump campaigned for a second term, in part on promises that he had the skills as a businessman to help usher in a strong economy.
What experts say. Groups such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, as well as a wide range of civil rights and social justice groups have decried the Trump administration’s racist targeting of Latinos in particular and people of color more broadly in ICE raids and detentions.
“The Congressional Hispanic Caucus opposes President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts that are terrorizing immigrant families and destabilizing the American economy,” the group wrote on its site. “The fact is that all Americans will feel the impact of mass deportations. The loss of teachers, caregivers, nurses, agricultural, construction, and essential workers and will spike inflation and prices.”
