This article was originally written by Christopher Corona on October 22, 2026 and translated to English by Magali Roibon.
Between September 21th and September 28th, NBC and Telemundo carried out a survey with 800 registered Latino voters. The results show that Latino support for the Republican party has diminished from 42% to 35%.
According to NBC News, 2/3 of those surveyed said that Trump’s immigration policies have been too aggressive and almost 3/4 said that they feel he has badly managed the economy. As a result, his approval ratings within the Latino community fell 27%.
“This reflected that the people have noticed that political decisions have consequences beyond campaign promises,” Advertising Student Aryana Perez said.
The Latino support toward Trump is at its all time low since 2016. This could give the Democratic party a huge opportunity to capitalize ahead of the mid-term elections, according to NBC News.
Vanessa Guzman, an Early Childhood Development student believes that this change is mainly because of the increase in raids, immigration detention and the aggressive measures that have been utilized during Trump’s second term.
“It is pretty evident that it is mainly the ICE raids that have been occurring,” Guzman said. “I believe a lot of people have noticed that this was not what Latinos voted for.”
Telemundo’s survey also shows that almost 1/5 of Latino voters that supported Trump in 2024 don’t want Congress controlled by Republicans, with 14% saying they support the Democrats and 8% that are undecided.
“His administration didn’t meet all the objectives and dreams that they sold the Latino voters,” International Relations Student Valentina Galiana said when asked why she believed that the Latino vote has moved away from Trump half-way through his second term.
Micah Roberts, Partner of Public Opinion Strategy, the Republican surveyor that organized the survey alongside the Democrat surveyor Aileen Cardona-Arroyo, classified the Latino voters as “the most indecisive of the indecisive”, and the diminished Latino support since 2024 as “impressive”.
Cardona-Arroyo emphasized that despite the current political climate favoring Democrats, the gain that the Democratic party is experiencing is in great part because of the opposition toward Trump and the economic environment, rather than support for Democrats.
Perez feels that it is time for change. Immigration is at the forefront of her life and her identity, and it is more than a political topic, since her family has been affected directly by the Trump administration.
“My father was deported in December,” Perez said. “Knowing that he is 1,000 miles away from me and I don’t know if he is safe or not.”
According to Instituto de Política Migratoria, there were 980,000 deportations during the first 18 months of Trump’s second term.
“I believe that it is very alienating,” Galiana said. “[The administration] is full of hate.”
With early voting underway until October 30th and Election Day being November 3rd, Galiana has a message she wanted to highlight:
“Go vote”.
