Exclusive Focus Group: Trump Bleeding Latino Voters

LATINO VOTERS FLOCKED TO DONALD TRUMP in surprisingly large numbers last November to help him retake the White House. But a year later, the same cohort has soured on his presidency, with many saying they regret their vote.

That’s the main takeaway from a new focus group of Latino Trump voters conducted by The Bulwark on September 10. Every single one of the seven participants said they regretted voting for Trump.

The participants said they were angry over the state of the economy and frustrated by Trump’s handling of immigration and deportations. Asked to give the president a letter grade for his term thus far, six gave him D’s and one gave an F. Asked later about her grade, one participant who gave a D said she was just trying to be nice.

There were no A’s for America First.

The focus group included voters from swing state Nevada, blue state California, and red state Florida, as well as states, including New Jersey, that have traditionally been heavily Democratic but moved toward Republicans in the Trump era. New Jersey is one of two states with gubernatorial elections this November.

A participant from the other state picking a governor this fall, Kimberly from Virginia, was asked what direction the country is going in. “I would say negative,” she said. “Grocery prices, we have the tariffs, we have the immigration going on, and also using the National Guard instead of police to fight crime.”

Kimberly and others painted a picture of a nation struggling to grapple with a darker blend of politics and open divisiveness from its leaders.

“I think a lot of people are a lot more hateful, they feel they can be a lot more open about it, because they see it everywhere so much that no one is really trying to be nice and get along and respect differences,” said another participant, Kandy from Colorado. “They think it’s okay to pass their judgments and stereotypes willy-nilly because no one does anything about it, because they see the people in control doing it.”

Members of the focus group agreed to participate on condition that only their first names and states of origin be used. For most of them, the top issue remains the economy, which is the prism through which they make their decisions. But after an election where Joe Biden’s weakness on the border allowed Trump to use the full force of his demagoguery to exploit immigration fears, what caught my eye was the nuance with which these voters expressed their displeasure with how the president was executing on his restrictionist vision for America.

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One participant, Reed from Nevada, said that he initially viewed Trump’s moves on immigration positively. But then he was confronted with the human suffering the administration was causing.

“Then you see the other flip side where you see families being ripped apart,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to be that dramatic where it’s going to be hurtful in that sense. So that kind of changed your mood from ‘Okay, the country is getting better on that immigration part.’ The borders are getting more strict, but at what cost?”

Beth from New Jersey also said she initially supported a tougher stance on immigration. ”We do need safety, we do need security, we owe it to our country,” she said. But she quickly added that she had lost confidence in the administration on the issue due to the lack of a “humane” approach to deportations. She tied Trump’s haphazard and heavy-handed execution on the issue to his and Elon Musk’s arbitrary firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers as part of the DOGE initiative.

“It’s bullying at another level,” she said. “I live in America, I don’t want to be in a dictatorship. I still want to be in a democratic nation that has rules, has regulations. . . . This is America, we gotta treat people with respect and dignity and I think a lot of that has gone out the window.”

Paolo, an 18-year-old from Florida, agreed.

“We see he’s super-extremist and ignoring history,” he said. “He’s taking down government history websites, he’s changing [the Department of Defense] to the Department of War. It seems that power has taken control of his mind where he thinks he can change the Constitution and control the entire country by himself.”

FOCUS GROUPS PROVIDE useful snapshots of sentiment at a given point of time. But what stands out about this one is not just the wide range of issues over which Latinos have disagreements with Trump, but the texture it adds to trends we are seeing elsewhere.

New polling of 800 Hispanic voters by Somos Votantes reinforces the idea that Trump is bleeding Latino support, with the president registering a -23 percent job approval rating (including a -26 percent rating on the economy). Trump’s weakness was also pronounced among young people and men, both categories that were bright spots for him in November.

Trump’s approval dropped 10 percentage points from 43 percent in May to 33 percent in September among young Latino voters, according to the Somos Votantes poll. His favorability rating dropped 5 percentage points among Hispanic men over the same period.

Chuck Rocha, who served as the architect of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Latino voter plan during his 2020 presidential run and as a senior adviser for Sen. Ruben Gallego’s 2024 campaign, said Trump is losing Latinos because voter anxiety on the economy was being coupled with personal fears about community and safety.

“There’s enormous anxiety in the community. There was lasting anxiety from the economic downturn and what Trump has done is add in a new layer of anxiety that ICE agents are patrolling our U.S. streets and picking up people because of the color of their skin,” Rocha told me. “Latinos were all for getting rid of criminals and rapists but now he’s picking up your abuela who is watching your baby in the park and it’s gone too far.”

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