Hispanics helped Trump retake the White House. Now their support is waning

By Jason Lange and Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Love of country is so important to Navy veteran Antonio Gonzales Jr. that he keeps an American flag lit up 24/7 outside his home in Porterville, California. 

 So while Gonzales, a 66-year-old retired surgical technologist, admits to concerns about the direction of the economy during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, he said he is willing to give the administration more time to back off from its trade war with China and help bring down the costs of everyday goods.

“I know there has to be hard times before there’s good times,” said Gonzales, who is Mexican American and voted for Trump in November.

The surge in support from Hispanic voters that helped power Trump to victory has waned since he took office,  with his approval rating among Latinos falling 3 percentage points to 34% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week,  amid concerns about the economy and the president’s hardline approach to immigration.

Trump’s disapproval ratings among Hispanic voters reached 61%, up 7 percentage points, compared with a 5 point increase among Americans overall, to 53%.

Trump won 46% of the Hispanic vote in November’s election, 14 points higher than in 2020, according to Edison Research exit polls.

While Democrat Kamala Harris won a larger share of the Hispanic vote, Trump performed better than any Republican presidential candidate since the 1970s, according to exit poll data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Some cracks are appearing in Trump’s coalition of supporters.

While Gonzales, the Navy veteran, supports tougher border controls, he admitted to reservations about the deportations of some people without judicial review.

  “It should be open-faced, so we should be able to see what is going on and that it’s not secretive,” he said.

Trump’s popularity has sagged broadly across a range of demographic groups, according to an analysis of more than 6,000 responses to Reuters/Ipsos polls that were conducted during his first month in office, from January 20 through February 20, and an additional 4,306 responses from the latest poll conducted over six days ending on April 21.

The analysis combined the responses from smaller polls in the first month to get a clearer picture of demographic trends. The poll results – gathered from nationwide surveys of U.S. adults – have margins of error between about 2 and 4 percentage points.

‘GOTTA MAKE SOME ADJUSTMENTS’

For Caleb Gonzalez, 49, a school counselor in San Antonio, Texas the focus of Trump’s first 100 days seemed to be crime and immigration. “Some of it’s good, some of it you gotta make some adjustments,” he said. “I see him doing a lot of trial and error and figuring things out.”

About one in five Americans – roughly 65 million people – identify as Hispanic and trace their origins to Spanish-speaking nations, especially Mexico, as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

“What really helped Republicans in 2024 is economic discontent and now that folks are not feeling better is an alarm bell for Republicans,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, head of the Latino Vote Initiative for the nonpartisan civil rights organization, UniDos. “I think what is happening now is that Trump owns the economy.”

Martinez de Castro said immigration policies were a second major focus, citing the organization’s bipartisan poll that found nearly 8 in 10 Latino voters support deporting dangerous criminals, but that the Trump administration should not target long-residing undocumented immigrants without criminal records.

“President Trump earned historic support from Latino Americans, who trust him to remove barriers to achieving the American Dream,” said Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary.

Trump’s approval rating on immigration policy among Hispanic voters declined 4 points to 32% while staying steady at 54% among white poll respondents. 

Support for an increase in the deportation of illegal immigrants among Hispanics in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll stood at 42%, a significant slice, although less than the 63% support from white respondents.

Norma Perez, 56, a Hispanic independent who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in November, supports Trump’s goals of reducing the size of government and deporting criminals who are in the country illegally.

“I am all for if you find someone who’s a violent illegal, then yeah, take them back,” said Perez, a financial analyst from Maryland, “But even those deserve due process.”

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Bo Erickson; Editing by Scott Malone and Suzanne Goldenberg)