Donald Trump has been amazingly successful in uniting Latino voters against him, according to recent polling by Latino Decisions, Gallup, and USC/LATimes/GQR, and he’s dragging the rest of the GOP along with him for the ride. Nationwide, just nine out of 100 Latino voters have a favorable opinion of Trump according to Latino Decisions. That’s what you get when your signature issue is an implausible wall built on racist foundations.
What about the presidential election? There, his support breaks into double-digits, with a whopping eleven percent saying they will vote for Trump over either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Not only that, but Latino voters are far less likely to say they’ll vote for downballot Republicans than they were in Latino Decisions polls from 2012.
After the 2012 elections, the Republican Party took a look at their deficit with the growing Latino population and wrote in their autopsy, “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence.”
Trump and his wall have proved the Republican Party absolutely right. For once.
The Presidential Numbers
Trump started his campaign denigrating Mexican immigrants, and it’s only been downhill from there. As a result, the Democratic margin in presidential matchups with Trump far exceeds even the gaudy numbers from 2008 and 2012:
Latino Decisions conveniently polled four different presidential matchups. We can see that while Trump fares much worse (higher Democratic margin) than either John McCain or Mitt ‘Self-deport’ Romney, Ted Cruz actually does about the same as these prior nominees, nationwide. (Note that the 2008 poll shown above was from much later in the election cycle.) This shows, first of all, that Cruz can’t help the GOP improve with Hispanics because of his background. It also shows just how damaging Trump in particular is to the Republican fortunes.
This is especially true in Florida. Arguably, President Obama’s recent policy changes with regards to Cuba may have changed some opinions, but again, we see a massive difference between Cruz and Trump:
Notably, Trump on the ticket sends Florida Latino voters into the same stratospheric realm as in other states, something that has not happened in the past.
Nevada (above) shows higher support for Democrats among Latinos than the nation as a whole, but even here there’s plenty of room for growth when Trump is the nominee.
Finally, we see a similar pattern in Colorado as well.
The Downballot Disaster
The Latino Decision polls also asked Latino voters about their preferences in House and Senate races. These questions came after questions about immigration issues supported by the presidential candidates, so the results may be influenced by that information. The corresponding questions in 2012 did not come after respondents were asked policy questions.
In all three states, the Democratic margin is substantially larger in the 2016 polls compared to the 2012 polls. Taken at face value, this would show that the Republican presidential primary has not been helping House Republicans at all.
The same goes for Senate races:
Requiem for an Autopsy
I’ll leave you with another quote from the autopsy the RNC conducted after the 2012 elections:
“...the RNC needs to carefully craft a tone that takes into consideration the unique perspective of the Hispanic community.”
Yeah. That worked out well.