Hispanic voters sent Trump back to power. Now some are souring

When one-time Democrat Sam Negron headed to the polls to cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2024, he did so with one thing on his mind above all – the economy.

“I didn’t like paying $7 for eggs,” said Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable in the majority-Latino city of Allentown. “But basically it was all his talking points… making the US a strong country again.”

Negron, who switched to the Republican Party in 2019 after decades as a Democrat, was not alone.

When Trump pulled off a decisive electoral victory in 2024, he did so with the backing of millions of Latino voters helping to propel him over the finish line.

That election saw Trump receive a higher percentage of the Latino vote than any other Republican in US history, with 46% of the varied electorate casting their ballot in his favour.

But one year into his first term, cracks in that support have begun to emerge.

New polling from CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, shows that support among US Latinos for Trump has fallen to 38%, a marked decline from a high of 49% in early February following his return to the White House.

The Latino vote is both vast and diverse, encompassing communities of varied ancestries, economic power and relative size.

Collectively, however, they form the largest non-white voting bloc in the country, totalling over 36 million people.

Data shows that Trump’s gains among these voters in 2024 was, to a large degree, a result of their dissatisfaction with the economy in the waning years of the Biden administration.

One poll, from Pew, suggested that 93% of Latinos who cast their votes for Trump rated the economy as their primary issue, with violent crime and immigration trailing far behind.

Those same concerns may now be coming back to haunt Trump.

Data from the new CBS poll shows that a significant majority of Latinos – 61% – disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 69% disapprove of his handling of inflation. The vast majority said they judge the performance of the US economy through prices.

Republican strategist Mike Madrid, a critic of Trump’s and among the most well-known observers of Latino politics, said he believed Latino voters have “completely turned” on Trump, primarily over the economy.

This trend, he said, is a repeat of the scenario the Democrats found themselves in during the November 2024 election.

“The Latino shift right was more a function of Latinos leaving the Democratic Party [due to the economy] than it was a function of being compelled by the Republican Party,” he said.

“A lot of people around here voted for Trump this go around, because nothing was happening with Biden,” said Moses Santana, a resident of a predominantly Latino area of North Philadelphia in which Trump picked up support in 2024.

“But things are still getting tight… people who are low-income are definitely feeling the impact of the prices,” added Santana, who works at a drug harm reduction facility. “A lot of them are thinking Trump has a lot to do with their issues.”

Santana’s assessment was echoed by John Acevedo, a 74-year-old realtor and resident of Pasadena, California.

“The economy is not doing well. The prices are up,” he said. “He promised they would come down. They haven’t.”

While White House officials have pointed to lower gas prices, tariff revenue and foreign investment as economic successes, polls indicate a broad spectrum of Americans remain concerned by a slowing job market, high prices and affordability issues.

Inflation remained at 2.7% in December for the second consecutive month, well above the Fed target, mainly due to rising food and housing costs. This means that prices are not falling, as Trump has claimed, but are instead rising at a slower rate.

Trump, for his part, has repeatedly blamed any lingering economic woes on Biden.

Inflation hit a 40-year-high of 9.1% under Biden’s term in June 2022, when the world’s economies were still grappling with pandemic-related disruptions. It had fallen by the end of his term.

The president’s argument is one that at least some of his Latino supporters are willing to entertain.

Lydia Dominguez, a Mexico-born, 10-year veteran of the Air Force and member of the Clark County School Board in Las Vegas, said she believes that it has been “pretty difficult” to get the economy back on track so far for this administration, despite what she considers their best effort.

“[They] have certainly been very productive in getting companies to come and have factories here in the US,” she said, adding that while prices remain high, she credits Trump for “empowering” companies and their employees.

Even among some staunch supporters of Trump, economic concerns create complex feelings about the president.

Among them is Amanda Garcia, a cattle rancher who lives near Rio Grande City, Texas, on the Mexican border.

While Garcia is broadly pleased with Trump’s administration – particularly his handling of the border and immigration – she said she has had to deal with market disruptions caused by his tariff campaigns.

“It really does affect the economy, and it impacts us [ranchers] on another level,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just him tweeting something [about trade], and it upsets someone, and it could really have an impact.”

“I don’t think he realises that sometimes.”

Other Latino voters have expressed concern about Trump’s immigration enforcement operations, which have included ICE raids across the country and the deportation of over 600,000 people between January 2024 and early December alone.

“I’m against all that,” said Rebeca Perez, a restaurant worker in the California town of Oxnard, which saw large-scale immigration raids at workplaces in June. “This is supposed to be a free country for everybody, but it isn’t.”

Perez added that in Oxnard, one of California’s agricultural hubs, produce has been wasted at farms because workers are too fearful to show up.

The CBS poll found that 70% of Latinos disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration – well above the national average of 58%.

While Latinos were split evenly on their support for Trump’s deportation goals, 63% said they dislike the way he is currently implementing them.

Several Latinos who spoke to the BBC, however, said they supported the immigration raids and framed them as protecting the jobs and livelihoods of legal immigrants and US citizens.

“As a human being, I feel for them. They’re poor in their countries,” said Sam Negron, the constable in Allentown. “But guess what? I’m poor in mine.”

As with the economy, Trump’s immigration drive has also created mixed feelings among some of those who still support him after a year in office.

Oscar Byron Sarmiento, a Houston-based electrician, said that while he believes Trump is doing a “great job”, he also believes that the immigration clampdown has “gone a little bit extreme”.

“There’s a lot of people who are good people. Law-abiding immigrants,” he said. “Yes, they’re here illegally, but I don’t think we need to go after these people.”

They want to be in the US and contributing, he added. “They’re following the rules. Like grandmas, moms, aunts and uncles,” Sarmiento said. “Leave those people alone.”

Mike Madrid, the political strategist, said that mitigating or reversing troubling poll numbers among Latinos is likely to prove difficult for the Trump White House ahead of the midterm elections later this year.

“We [Latinos] have the weakest partisan anchor of any group and can reject both parties when they fail them or just aren’t honest with them,” he added. “Both parties can be culpable of that.”

The president’s issues among Latinos are ones even many Trump supporters acknowledge – and hope can be remedied in time.

“There are growing concerns,” said Oscar Byron Sarmiento’s wife, Crystal. “Right now Trump is trending in a lower direction, simply because of not being able to get in front of the messaging.”

Additional reporting by Leire Ventas of BBC Mundo and Angélica Casas

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