The NPR Politics Podcast - Many Latinos Who Backed Trump Say They Won't Support Republicans Next Time

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Many Latinos who voted for President Trump in the last election say they are disappointed or even regret voting for him, according to recent polling. We discuss what’s behind the dissatisfaction and what it could mean for next year’s midterm elections. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, politics correspondent Ashley Lopez and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The news is saturated with coverage of President Trump, but it is easy to get overloaded. So on Trump's terms, we bring you short, digestible stories, five minutes or less, about the 47th president. Listen for same-day developments on tariffs, the economy, and all of the ways that Trump is governing like no president ever has before. Trump's terms. Listen on the NPR app wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Cheryl calling from the Positive Poland Airport. I'm about to head home to Boston. Yesterday, my son, Sam, along with his boatmates, Will, Ryan, and Lyle, won gold at the under-23 World Rowing Championships the first time the United States has meddled in this boat category. This podcast was recorded at... 106 p.m. on Wednesday, August 27, 2025.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be naming of pride. That's so cool. That's great. Parents of those kinds of athletes deserve a lot of credit because they put a lot of time on the line around the world. That's incredible. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tifa Shiverum. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. All right. So today on the show, we're talking about Latino voters. They were a significant part of the coalition that helped elect President Trump in 2024. But recent polling shows Trump

and the Republican Party losing some of that supports. So, Ashley, tell us more about what these polls are showing. Right. So there's a Latino polling company called ECIS as well as another group called Somos Voltantes that have done some polling recently about how Latinos are feeling, you know, several months now into the Trump administration. And the big takeaway from their polling, there's one that was released in July that I thought was interesting that shows that fewer Latinos overall are supporting Trump than were just a few months before that. And in fact, a third of Latinos who voted for President Trump last November say they do not plan to vote for. for Republicans next year. Eckie's also released a poll about a week ago that looked more broadly at these voters, particularly

in some of the more competitive congressional districts across the country. And they found some very similar feedback about a quarter of those people who voted for Trump last year who say they're either disappointed in his performance or they outright regret voting for him. And I think all of this spells some pretty big troubles for the GOP. Yeah. Well, what's behind that? What's driving the dissatisfaction here?

The economy. I mean, like, it's pretty obvious stuff. These were a group of voters who this was their top line issue. You heard it time and time again from a lot of voters, especially a lot of these swing voters or these like sort of key demographics that switched from voting for Biden to Trump in 2024. High prices of groceries and health care. These are things that they have been, you know, telling lawmakers they care about. And Trump made a lot of big promises about high prices. You know, day one, prices are going to come down.

And that hasn't been the reality. And in fact, you know, we have been seeing because of tariffs, you know, some like small. upticks and prices depending on what you're looking at. And that could only continue. That could be a trend that continues from here on now. So I don't think this particular problem will be less of a problem for Republicans as things move forward. For both of you, I mean, these voters say they aren't happy with Republicans, right? That's a pretty significant, you know, one-third of them saying that. But does that mean they're turning towards Democrats? Well, it doesn't appear to be the case at this point that they're turning toward Democrats based on this polling and other polling that we've

so far, you know, Democrats' favorability ratings are about as low as they've ever been. They've had some real issues with their base. And that includes, you know, also crossover voters like Latino voters who had been traditionally leaning much more heavily toward Democrats than they did in the 2024 election, where they voted in surprising numbers to a lot of people for Donald Trump, mostly because of, as Ashley was saying, the economy. And I think that this could have some big ramifications for next year's midterm elections because, you know, you always have lower turnout in midterm elections. And with a group like Latino voters, which has been lower turnout than other groups like white college educated voters, for example, they're an even more

difficult group to turn out. So that's going to take a lot of money, a lot of time. And I think both parties are concerned and Republicans especially should be concerned for those districts where you have Republicans who need Latinos to turn out or Latino Republicans in some districts in places like California or South Texas, that they're going to be biting their nails hoping that they can turn people out but might be pushing a boulder up a hill. Yeah. Polsters told me that like mostly a lot of the folks who they talked to who, you know, in some cases they were Biden voters and Trump voters and now they're like in an undecided

bucket. They're just sort of unhappy with both parties not doing much to address their sort of material needs here, like their health insurance costs are going up and the price of groceries and their local grocery store are going up. And you could see that as an opening for either party to either do something about that or have like at least an ambitious plan. If you're a Democrat, like, you know, put forward some economic populism that could persuade these voters into your bucket. But for right now, I mean, we're not hearing some cohesive message about prices and like what a plan is to actually bring down prices, which is actually kind of a tough lift anyways.

But I do think it's going to be tough for any party to make a case to these voters when they have been at this point disappointed by both parties on this issue. I just want to ask a pinpoint question, though, because you mentioned that, you know, the messaging on, like, economics and prices writ large. But have Democrats or Republicans at this point done any messaging that specifically is like Latino voters? Like, this is kind of what we're doing here. You know, I talked to a guy who works for a conservative group that actually organized Latino voters, particularly in, like, more competitive districts on the issue of the economy to vote for conservatives. And he said, one, that he is worried about tariffs. That is sort of the big thing that sort of weighs on him.

He thinks this could be a liability for the party. But two, that their sort of optimistic side says that they think Latinos will sort of hang in there because they think, like, there will be bigger down the road, like six, seven months from now, the economy could look very different, like a lot of the policies that Trump put in place. And I mean, specifics on this were kind of vague. Like what exactly could be helping the economy six, seven months from now? I didn't really get a firm grasp on. But they think that like if the economic picture closer to an election and now we're talking a year from now is really when it matters, they think the picture will be a little sunnier. But again, I didn't really get a sense of where that's coming from. But I think they think like right now things are tough, but they, you know, especially Republicans are pretty optimistic that things will turn in about a year.

And Democrats feel the complete opposite of that because they feel like there's been a lagging effect from tariffs where you've had companies really stockpile a lot of goods. You haven't seen prices go up as much as people think they might when those stockpiles start to run out. And they have to pay the big prices for those goods that they're bringing into the country to ship here. And then those eventually get translated to consumers. And when that happens, then you're going to likely see even more dissatisfaction. And that's only going to be placed on the party that's power. And right now, Republicans run everything in Washington from the White House to the Senate and the House. And, you know, when you think about places like Texas, which has gone forward with this redistricting project of theirs, banking on being able to get Latinos back out to the polls in South Texas, you know, it could be a gamble on their part that might backfire. Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like there's a waiting game happening on both sides, which is quite fascinating. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back.

So, Ashley, I mean, how are these voters different from other Trump supporters? I mean, these are folks who voted for Biden in 2020 and then Trump in 2024. So they don't exactly seem to be Trump loyalists. I mean, they're loyalists to no party. I mean, Latino voters are really fun to report on because they're the ultimate swing voter. If you look at a lot of other voters in this country, the immigrant population isn't quite as big as we're talking about with Latino families. So voters have longer histories here. They're more entrenched in either party.

That is not true here. And then also there's the added thing. I mean, I think Latinos are interesting because the economy is when it's sort of in the forefront of like policy issues, that is when they're the most engaged. Because a lot of immigrants come to this country for, you know, economic prosperity. That is the promise of this country. And so whether, you know, it's one party sort of not delivering on that, that is what's most important. And it's less about, you know, sort of party ID for them. So, I mean, this is an interesting situation now where we had back to back high prices

after the pandemic to parties now, not delivering on something as big as bringing down prices. So we will have to see. Well, Trump went from 47% of the popular vote to 49% of the popular vote in this past election. So how did he do that, right? He was able to do that by bringing over some of these crossover voters, people who maybe had been more skeptical of Trump. In particular, people like Latinos, younger Latinos, younger men. There were a lot of younger men across racial lines who wound up going toward Trump.

And the way that Trump was able to do that was partially because there was a foundation of the economy that they felt prices were too high, but also on culture. And Republicans have tried this for a long time to try to appeal to Latinos on culture. And it really didn't quite stick until 2024. And you wonder how much of that was really economic. and not culture. And I think that's going to be tested again in 2026 and 2028. Yeah. And I will say like polling has found that the culture issues, even stuff like immigration, which border issues are important to a lot of Latinos, they actually dislike, and they have told posters, they dislike the focus on these sort of, you know, political retributions,

culture wars, and even the mass deportations. And they would like to see the president focus more on the economy and focusing all his effort on lowering prices. There are a lot of Latino citizens who will say that they don't like illegal immigration because they feel like they did it the right way. But they also don't like the harshness of how far they think that the Trump administration has gone. And that certainly showed up in polling as well. I feel like we've seen for so many years both parties really struggled to court Latino voters. I'm thinking of like Hillary Clinton, not my abuela, like these big moments where I feel like parties just failed and failed and failed. And what it has come down to is really their pocketbooks.

right? Like, it's the economy over and over and over again. So I'm kind of wondering, like, looking forward, are there ways that, you know, parties right now are in the Trump administration right now, they can course correct? You know, I think that politics comes down to trust, ultimately. Who do you feel most shares your values? Who do you feel most is going to help your pocketbook? And for a long time, Democrats on balance, had that trust by a fairly large percentage compared to Republicans. And, you know, only in 2024 do we see that gap really close. You could argue that George W. Bush was able to do that a bit as well as a border governor. Does Donald Trump have the same? same, you know, depth of connection with Latino voters that somebody like a Republican in George W. Bush did, who also pushed, by the way, for comprehensive immigration reform, that's really going to be tested in this moment of political volatility. And actually, I mean, there are some pretty wide differences among Latino voters as a group, right? Like some of them are immigrants. Some of them have been here for generations. What are those differences end up looking like? Yeah, I mean, just like all voting blocks, they don't, you know, Latino voters don't vote as a monolith, you know, depending

what country you came from, your politics from that country might be different, you know, and that is culturally speaking. Like there are also, you know, I lived in Texas for a long time. There are families that were there before that was even Texas. You know what I mean? And they were sort of like of Mexican descent. Anyway, so it really is very different depending what kind of community we're talking about. And there's also a difference, I should say, like with other voters, there's a gender breakdown here in 2024. 60% of Latinas voted for Kamla Harris and Tim Walz and 50% of Latino men. voted for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Still Trump won more Latino votes than any other Republicans since 2004 when George Bush was elected. It is an ever-changing group of voters. There is not like uniformity within them. And yeah, you're right. I think that is part of the reason why it's hard for parties and I'm both parties to effectively reach them and then also create any sort of loyalty with them because that takes a long relationship. A long relationship. And something that Domenico, I think, pointed out earlier, money. It's costly to reach voters who have such a wide, know, breath and all these different kinds of opinions and beliefs and backgrounds.

It's really hard to reach voters who don't traditionally turn out at high rates anyway, right? The Trump campaign has taken a huge risk on these kind of quote unquote forgotten voters who a lot of people have written off as saying, well, they're not likely to show up. So why are we going to spend all this money on trying to get them out to vote? You know, the Trump campaign, a lot of conservative, some of the people that Ashley spoke to for her story, are among the types of people on the Republican side who have gone and knocked on doors to try to change the narrative with Latinos to try to get them to more support Republicans. But when you're stuck in a place where you feel like your pocketbook is being pinched and you're already struggling, and that's

what people are saying matters to them the most in this polling, then it makes it really hard to then convince them to keep supporting your ticket. Okay. So just to zoom out here for a second, I mean, as of last year, there were an estimated 36 million Latino voters who were eligible to vote in the United States. So how important are these voters? I mean, for both Democrats and Republicans. This is a group that's only growing. And it is a group that both parties have tried to target. Both parties have struggled to target in different kinds of ways.

And we're seeing a lot of change right now in how people feel about each party. And neither party is really well liked. And they're going to have a lot of work to do to try to get Latino. is in their corner. Yeah, and depending where you're looking at, like, I mean, the jury still out on how much of an impact this will have, you know, nationwide, but there are going to be congressional districts where Latinos play a very important role. These are competitive districts, usually in the sort of excerpts and suburbs of big cities

where a lot of Latino families have been migrating to. They could play a really important role there. And if you remember, like, the control of the house really does just come down to a couple of seats here and there. So, you know, they could play a key role. in some of those really competitive districts. I mean, you already mentioned, like, Texas is a place where they have, at least in the border,

they're trying to make a play for the Latino voters there in South Texas. And, you know, that has made the margins across the other sort of districts that they have. They're closer. So, you know, if those voters don't come out, it does spell some significant trouble if Republicans want to keep the House. All right, we're going to leave it there for today.

I'm Tepa Chivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.