Latino Voters Defy Party Lines as 2026 Midterms Approach

-Editorial 

Latino voters are showing signs of moving away from President Donald Trump less than two years after their increased support helped him win the presidency in 2024, according to political researchers and strategists who say the shift has not translated into a clear return to the Democratic Party.

Instead, Latino voters increasingly appear to be acting as an independent or swing constituency, with economic concerns, dissatisfaction with both political parties and opposition to the political establishment influencing their choices, panelists said during an American Community Media national media briefing.

The discussion was the first in a planned series of national media briefings examining changes in the U.S. electorate ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump made significant gains among Latino voters in 2024, prompting widespread discussion about whether the results represented a historic political realignment. However, recent polling and election results suggest the changes may be better understood as a movement away from traditional party loyalties, according to the panelists.

María Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez, senior research director at Equis Research, said her organization initially considered whether the movement toward Republicans could represent a realignment.

“There were moments where we felt like all the signs were pointing to realignment,” Di Franco Quiñonez said.

However, she said subsequent polling and election results have pointed instead to an electorate that is increasingly willing to shift between parties.

“What we had actually started to see was … less Latino voters identifying with the Democratic Party and more identifying as independents,” she said.

Di Franco Quiñonez said there is an important distinction between how voters identify politically and how they vote in a particular election. A voter may support a Republican or Democratic candidate without becoming more closely aligned with that party.

She said Equis Research has found that Latino voters have become less likely to identify with Democrats while Republican support has increased in some elections without producing a corresponding increase in identification with the Republican Party.

“Support for Republican candidates without necessarily a heightened identification of the Republican Party as a whole,” she said.

Recent polling also indicates that some Latino voters who supported Trump in 2024 have changed their views.

Di Franco Quiñonez said approximately 14% of Latino voters who voted for Trump in 2024 now say they would support a Democratic candidate in November. Another 10% are undecided.

She cautioned that dissatisfaction with Trump does not automatically translate into support for Democrats.

“It’s not the case that everybody who is frustrated with Trump is now running toward the Democratic Party,” she said.

Instead, she said, some voters are moving toward Democrats while others remain undecided or potentially available to either party.

The movement away from Trump is not limited to one particular demographic group, according to Di Franco Quiñonez.

Equis polling has found changes among younger and older voters, men and women, and voters in different regions of the country. She cited Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, Nevada and Arizona as areas where the organization is examining Latino voting patterns.

One group that has shown particularly significant movement is irregular voters, she said.

Irregular voters played an important role in Trump’s 2024 gains among Latinos. Some had not voted in 2020, while others were participating in an election for the first time.

Their participation could be important in the 2026 midterms because voters who participate less consistently are generally less likely to cast ballots in midterm elections.

“Understanding how the support among those irregular voters has swung … really set up some of the swings that we’re seeing among them for these upcoming elections,” Di Franco Quiñonez said.

She pointed to the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election as one of the first post-2024 statewide races to provide an indication that Democratic support among Latino voters was increasing.

In heavily Latino areas of New Jersey, including parts of Hudson County, Di Franco Quiñonez said Democratic support increased compared with the level seen among Latino voters during the 2024 presidential election.

She said general elections can provide a clearer measure of overall Latino voting behavior than primary or special elections because voters are choosing between candidates from different political parties.

Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist, author of “The Latino Century” and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said the changes in Latino political behavior did not begin in 2024.

Madrid said the movement away from traditional party identification has been developing since at least 2016.

He pointed to generational differences that became visible during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as an early indication of changing attitudes among Latino voters.

Madrid said he began raising concerns about Democratic losses among Latino voters while working with the Lincoln Project, a group that opposed Trump.

He said some Republicans also incorrectly interpreted the 2024 election results as evidence that Latino voters had become part of a new, permanent Republican or MAGA majority.

“This is not and never has been a realignment,” Madrid said.

Instead, Madrid described the trend as a broader movement away from both political parties.

“We’re witnessing … a broad movement away institutionally from the parties,” he said.

Madrid said Latino voters are increasingly attracted to populist messages but that populism should not automatically be equated with Republican politics.

He also rejected the idea that Latino voters who moved toward Trump in 2024 necessarily became more conservative or more closely aligned with the Republican Party.

“They weren’t voting for Donald Trump. They weren’t becoming more Trumpy. They weren’t becoming more Republican,” Madrid said.

He argued that some Latino voters were primarily expressing dissatisfaction with Democrats rather than embracing Republicans as a long-term political home.

Madrid said the same dynamic could now be occurring in reverse, with some Latino voters moving away from Trump without necessarily developing a strong attachment to Democrats.

He said polling conducted in California, the nation’s state with the largest Latino population, showed dissatisfaction with both parties, with Republicans facing greater levels of disaffection in the survey.

The panelists repeatedly identified economic conditions as a major factor in Latino voting behavior.

Madrid said economic concerns have been the dominant issue for Latino voters for decades and argued that political parties have not adequately addressed those concerns.

“The economy has been the dominant issue for 30 years,” he said.

Clarissa Martínez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, said Latino voters have historically demonstrated characteristics of a swing electorate.

Martínez De Castro said she wrote her first report on Hispanic voters for UnidosUS in 2002 and that ticket splitting has long been a feature of the Latino electorate.

She said Latino voters have historically supported Democratic candidates at higher rates but have also consistently included a significant Republican constituency.

For many years, Martínez De Castro said, Republicans were less aggressive about campaigning for Latino voters while Democrats benefited from that lack of competition.

That changed as Republicans increased their outreach to Latino voters, she said.

At the same time, Martínez De Castro said Democrats did not necessarily convert their historical advantage among Latino voters into permanent party loyalty.

She said the growing number of Latino voters identifying as independents is particularly significant because the Latino electorate is relatively young.

Between 20% and 25% of Latinos who vote in each election are new to the electorate, according to Martínez De Castro.

Economic concerns have remained central to that electorate, she said.

Martínez De Castro said Latino voters are sometimes misunderstood because political campaigns have historically focused heavily on immigration when discussing issues important to Hispanic communities.

Immigration remains an important issue, she said, but it is not the only or necessarily the most important concern.

She said eight out of 10 Hispanic working adults are part of the working class, making changes in household expenses particularly significant.

“Any fluctuation in costs or expenses can make the difference between a family barely staying afloat or going under,” Martínez De Castro said.

She said four of the five leading issues among Latino voters are currently related to household finances: the cost of living, wages and jobs, housing costs and health care. Immigration ranks fifth.

The economic focus could help explain why some Latino voters have responded to populist candidates on both the right and left, Martínez De Castro said.

She noted that economic dissatisfaction has influenced voters across party lines, including voters who previously supported President Joe Biden and later supported Trump.

“Economic discontent helped Biden beat Trump. It then helped Trump beat Biden and Harris,” she said.

The panel also addressed whether some Latino voters are moving toward the populist left and candidates associated with democratic socialism.

Eli Valentin, assistant dean of graduate and leadership studies at the W. Franklyn Richardson Graduate Center at Virginia Union University and author of “Politicking in the Barrio,” said the evidence does not necessarily indicate that Latino voters are undergoing a broad ideological shift toward socialism.

Instead, he described the movement as primarily driven by voters’ economic circumstances.

“I think that this is a material movement before it is an ideological movement,” Valentin said.

By “material,” Valentin said he meant voters responding to concrete circumstances in their everyday lives, including economic pressures, rather than necessarily changing their underlying political ideology.

He acknowledged that some Latino voters identify with the progressive left and that a smaller group may identify with democratic socialism. 

However, he said policy preferences and ideological identities should not be treated as the same thing.

Valentin pointed to the political success of Zohran Mamdani in New York as an example of how economic populism can appeal to Latino voters.

Mamdani won a plurality of Latino voters in the Democratic primary and a majority in the general election, according to Valentin.

Valentin also pointed to several New York congressional and local contests in which candidates associated with the Democratic Socialist movement defeated established Democratic politicians or their preferred candidates.

He said those results reflected an anti-establishment sentiment that crosses traditional partisan boundaries.

“There’s a strong anti-establishment fervor that is driving a lot of Latino voting behavior,” Valentin said. 

He cautioned against interpreting those results simply as evidence that Latino voters are becoming Democratic socialists.

Instead, he said voters may be responding to candidates who emphasize economic issues and challenge established political institutions.

Valentin also rejected arguments that the success of progressive candidates among Latino voters is illegitimate because many of those candidates or their supporters are not Latino.

He said progressive political movements have supported Latino candidates in previous elections and that the recent results should be considered within the broader context of political competition and dissatisfaction with established officeholders.