Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
A massive rightward shift among Hispanics was one of the big reasons President Donald Trump and the Republican Party won in 2024. Two years later, Hispanics’ apparent movement back to the Democrats could be the biggest reason for a major GOP midterm defeat.
As Hispanic voters go, so goes the nation?
Hispanic voters were one of the 2024 election’s biggest stories. National exit polls estimated that Vice President Kamala Harris carried the demographic by a mere five percentage points, down from the 33-point margin President Joe Biden secured just four years before. And note: Biden’s victory was smaller than Hillary Clinton’s 38-point advantage with Hispanics in 2016 and Barack Obama’s 44-point landslide in 2012.
This dramatic change, coming on the heels of a slower move in the same direction, hinted at a durable realignment, and it jolted Democrats. The party had long relied on Hispanics, one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups, to make up for its decline with White voters without a college degree. If the trend stabilized — or worse, continued — Democrats would suddenly find it nearly impossible to win the presidency.
Well, they can exhale — at least for the moment — because the data show Hispanics sharply reverting to their pre-2024 habits.
This week, I looked at all the polls of registered or likely voters in the RealClearPolitics job approval index that also provide data for Hispanics. On aggregate, Trump’s job approval among Hispanics was a mere 33.7 percent for the seven polls. That’s not much different from the 32 percent share he won from Hispanic voters in 2020.
Results from recent elections support the polling. NBC News analyst Steve Kornacki found that Democrat Mikie Sherrill won heavily Hispanic towns in last year’s New Jersey gubernatorial election by margins close to or greater than Biden’s in 2020. Virginia data indicate Democrat Abigail Spanberger also carried Hispanic areas by much larger margins than Harris did.
Results like that in November would probably doom Republicans’ chances of keeping control the House. Seven GOP incumbents hold marginal districts where Hispanics are 14 percent or more of the citizen voting-age population. Eight potential GOP pickup seats also have that size Hispanic voting populations. It’s virtually impossible for Republicans to win a majority if they lose in all of these districts.
The Hispanic vote could prove decisive in the Senate, too. Most of the Senate seats in play this cycle have small Hispanic populations, but Hispanic voters made up 8 percent of 2024 voters in North Carolina. Trump carried Hispanics there; if Democratic nominee Roy Cooper can win them by a large margin, it will be very hard for GOP nominee Michael Whatley to prevail.
Hispanic voters could also be the difference in states with smaller population shares. In 2024, Republican Mike Rogers lost Michigan’s Senate race by only 19,000 votes even as Trump carried the state. That was likely due to his shortfall among the 6 percent of voters who were Hispanic. Rogers carried them by 11 percentage points while Trump won them by 21, according to exit polls. Hispanics cast some 334,000 votes for senator, meaning Rogers’ deficiency cost him about 33,000 votes, more than his losing margin.
Then there’s Texas. Democrats think they can put the Lone Star State in play if Republicans nominate hard-right Attorney General Ken Paxton. In 2024, Hispanics cast 26 percent of the vote, and Trump won them by 10 percentage points. In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke won Hispanics by 29 points when he came close to toppling Sen. Ted Cruz (R). Returning to those numbers, as the data suggest is possible, would make the seat vulnerable to a strong challenge by Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee.
It’s easy to see why Hispanics might be souring on Trump. His often ham-fisted immigration enforcement tactics have the greatest direct impact on Hispanic communities, given their predominance among the undocumented immigrant population. Hispanics are also disproportionately working class. They suffer a lot from continued inflation, the slowing job market and a lack of real-wage growth. Disappointment and anger on the economy and immigration surely contribute to the low job-approval ratings Trump is getting from them.
Still, the Democratic Party shouldn’t get too comfortable. Hispanics have not started to think of themselves as Democrats again. A recent study by YouGov found that Democrats’ advantage in how Hispanic voters identified by party fell from 34 percentage points in 2007 to 15 in 2025. That last number is only a point higher than it was in 2024 and remains well below the 26-point Democratic advantage from 2020.
Hispanic independents may be swinging against Trump’s GOP this year, but these voters have not recommitted to a party many decided no longer had their backs.
Republicans and Democrats both have a long way to go to secure Hispanics’ trust — in November and beyond. Whichever party does better at that will go a long way toward determining whether the midterms are a mild rebuke or a decisive rejection of Trump’s second term.
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