Trump’s support among Latinos is growing

President Joe Biden continues to lose crucial support among Latino voters, with an increasing number of those voters saying they are more likely to vote for former President Donald Trump, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll shows Trump edging Biden among Latino voters, with 46% supporting Trump and 40% favoring Biden. But because Latino voters make up just 15% of the electorate, the poll’s sample size of the group is not large enough to assess small differences reliably. For a subgroup that size, the margin of error is 10 percentage points.

But the poll, and others like it, make clear that Trump has continued to make remarkable inroads with Latino voters.

Few observers would have predicted this kind of support for a former president who, when he first declared his candidacy for the White House nearly a decade ago, claimed that many Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals. During the 2020 election, many Democrats were stunned when Trump saw his support from immigrantheavy precincts improve dramatically.

For much of that campaign, many Democrats presumed that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies would repel Latino voters. And in much of the country, that presumption proved true. About 60% voted for Biden, and Latino voters helped flip Arizona to Democrats in 2020. They were also central to the party’s ability to hold on to Nevada in that election and the 2022 Senate race. But Latino voters in South Texas and Florida were also key for Republican wins in those states in 2020.