Why the Hispanic vote could sway the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections
While millions of U.S. voters have become only more entrenched in their party loyalties in the era of Donald Trump, the large and growing Hispanic community has instead bucked that partisan trend. A willingness to cast ballots across party lines has made the roughly 39 million Hispanic eligible voters a crucial demographic at election time, courted equally by Democrats and Republicans.
Hispanic voters have soured on Republicans over ICE and economy — but many don't vote along party lines
Mike Crawley · CBC News
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While millions of U.S. voters have become only more entrenched in their party loyalties in the era of Donald Trump, the large and growing Hispanic community has instead bucked that partisan trend.
A willingness to cast ballots across party lines has made the roughly 39 million Hispanic eligible voters in the U.S. a crucial demographic at election time, courted equally by Democrats and Republicans.
They swung toward Trump in record numbers in 2024.
But if their current dissatisfaction with Trump's performance as president translates into votes in next Tuesday's midterms, the Latino community could potentially sway some crucial races and tip the balance of power in Congress toward the Democrats.
Latinos are the "swingiest" voters in the nation, says Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, which advocates for the 4.5 million Hispanic-owned companies (small and large) across the country.
"We are a community that doesn't vote party, it votes person," Palomarez told CBC News. "You'll see Republicans willing to vote for a Democrat in the Hispanic community very often, and conversely Democrats willing to go for a Republican."
U.S. President Donald Trump travelled to Corpus Christi, Texas, for a campaign rally on Tuesday to try to boost support for Republican midterm candidates in the largely Hispanic districts of south Texas. (Eric Vryn/The Associated Press)
Trump increased his share of Hispanic voters in each successive election since 2016, garnering the highest percentage ever for a Republican presidential candidate in 2024, according to exit polls.
Yet the very issues that drove Hispanic support for Trump in 2024 — reducing the cost of living and tightening border security — could be the ones that hurt the Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
ICE tactics draw fire
Some Hispanic voters are focused on how Trump's decision to go to war with Iran triggered a sharp rise in the price of gas and diesel across the U.S.
Others are deeply concerned by the way Trump dramatically ramped up detention of undocumented Hispanics who've lived upstanding lives in the U.S. for years, rather than sticking to his pledge of deporting violent criminals.
In Texas, where Hispanics make up roughly one-third of eligible voters, disenchantment with Trump and the Republicans is palpable in the Latino-majority cities of the Rio Grande Valley.
CBC News shadowed a team of get-out-the-vote canvassers for LUPE Votes — an activist group whose name, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, translates as "union of all the people" — in the border city of Edinburg.
Canvassers with the activist group LUPE Votes prepare to knock on doors in the predominantly Hispanic city of Edinburg, Texas, with early voting under way in the U.S. midterms. José Ferrer, right, says his stepfather was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and later deported. (Mike Crawley/CBC)
One of the canvassers, 24-year-old Jose Ferrer, said his stepfather was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Father's Day this year. The family found his truck abandoned at the side of the road and didn't hear from him for two weeks. He was deported to Mexico two months later.
"I'm not the only one getting affected, obviously," Ferrer told CBC News. His mother-in-law, a teacher, has described her students' parents being grabbed by ICE agents while waiting for the school bus.
ICE enforcement 'brutal' in south Texas: developer
The anger in the community over ICE tactics cuts across economic lines.
Mario Guerrero, a developer who voted for Trump three times because he considered him a very successful businessman, says immigration enforcement is one of the key reasons he'll vote Democrat on the midterm ballot.
"I believe in the American dream," Guerrero said in an interview at the site of a supermarket he's building beside a new housing development in Pharr, next door to Edinburg.
"The ICE enforcement that we've been seeing here in south Texas has been brutal," he said, adding that the job-site and roadside raids have scared off so many people from coming to work that the pace of construction projects slowed to a crawl.
Mario Guerrero, CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, oversees work on a grocery store his company is building on the edge of a residential subdivision in Pharr, Texas. (Mike Crawley/CBC)
"All of our workers are documented," Guerrero said. "The problem is [ICE agents are] apprehending, they're taking people with the proper documentation."
He believes the tactics will have midterm consequences for the Republicans, including "a turnout of Mexican Americans like they've never seen before."
Hispanic voting bloc defies generalization
Hispanic people now account for one-sixth of the eligible voters in the U.S., a larger group than Black Americans, according to data compiled by Pew Research Center.
But they defy broad generalizations as a voting bloc. They encompass devout Catholics, fiscally conservative entrepreneurs, working class immigrants-turned-citizens and college-educated Hispanics whose families have been in the U.S. for generations.
"We have seen over and over with data that we cannot put Latino voters in one category," said Dayana Iza, Texas director of Mi Familia Vota, a national organization that aims to build Latino political power.
She describes the group's work as helping Hispanic Americans "connect the dots" to understand how elections can have a tangible impact on their daily lives.
Álvaro Corral, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, specializes in the politics of Latino voters in the U.S. (Mike Crawley/CBC)
"That is what is really going to make a difference with how Latinos turn out for these midterms," Iza told CBC News.
"There are a lot of Latinos that still do not participate in this electoral process, and those are the folks that we're really trying to target."
Nuance on immigration, border security
But even if there is a notable shift away from the Republicans at the midterms, it won't necessarily mean that Hispanic voters are fully embracing everything about the Democratic Party.
Neither party has accurately reflected the nuanced position of the typical Hispanic voter on immigration and border security, says Álvaro Corral, political science professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
He says that position combines strong measures to keep criminals from flowing across the border with a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants who've long worked in the U.S.
Instead, the Trump administration's approach "is really offending the sensibilities and morality of a large portion of the Latino voters," Corral told CBC News.
Palomarez, of the U.S Hispanic Business Council, says the Democrats "took the Hispanic vote for granted" and at the national level shifted "a bit too left for the Hispanic community's liking."
That leeriness about the Democrats can be seen in the campaigns of some of their own Hispanic candidates.
Bobby Pulido, left, campaigning recently at a seniors' activity center in McAllen, Texas. (Mike Crawley/CBC)
'Not Team Red. Not Team Blue'
Bobby Pulido, the Latino recording star who's trying to unseat incumbent Republican Monica De La Cruz in the 15th congressional district of Texas, downplays his party in his campaign ads and material.
"Not Team Red. Not Team Blue. Team You," says a slogan on the T-shirts worn by Pulido's campaign workers.
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"Hispanics, they're not so partisan. It's very much, 'Are you gonna go fight for me?' That's what matters," Pulido told CBC News in an interview after he campaigned at a seniors' activity centre.
Still, Pulido says Hispanic Americans will punish Republican candidates in the midterms because they hate how ICE raids both separate families and disrupt the economy.
"When you add those two things, it's a very, very big explosion and you're going to see this Nov. 3."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Crawley is a correspondent for CBC News, based in Washington. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., spent six years as a freelance journalist in various parts of Africa, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike reported on Ontario politics for 15 years. He was born and raised in Saint John, N.B.
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