Esp
Latino Voters and the Balance of Power in the Upcoming Elections
The Latino Vote: What’s at Stake in 2026 is a four-part series from Texas Latino Conservatives examining the role of Latino voters in the 2026 election. The series examines the influence of Latino voters, the debate over socialism, lessons from Latin America, and the issues shaping voters’ decisions this November. Part 1 looks at why Latino voters could play a decisive role this November.
To receive future news and updates via email, subscribe below.
Americans of Latino heritage may hold the balance of power in their hands in November’s election. After four years of the Joe Biden administration and Democratic rule, and the year and a half of Donald Trump and Republican rule, which way will the majority of Latinos vote, and how will it affect the overall results?
This year’s midterm elections will answer a lot of questions about what direction the country is heading, politically speaking. It was just two years ago that President Donald Trump won 48 percent of the Latino vote, 12 points higher than he received in 2020.
The difference proved to be enough to help him carry Arizona and win back the White House. But will Trump and the Republicans continue to grow their support among Latinos, or will it fall in 2026 enough to put Democrats back in control of the House, and possibly the Senate?
According to a survey earlier in the year by the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 39 million Hispanic Americans eligible to vote this year, amounting to 16 percent of the electorate. Much of the growth has come from roughly four million U.S.-born Latinos who have reached voting age in the past two years, and they may be the deciding factor.
An estimated 54% of Latino voters are planning to vote for a Democratic House candidate in November, and 27% plan to vote for a Republican, with 19% undecided, according to a poll of 3,000 registered Latino voters, according to CBS News.
That 54% figure is consistent with the Democratic share of the Latino vote in the 2024 U.S. House elections, and indicative of the longer-term drop in those elections, as Democrats won 69% in 2018, 63% in 2020, and 60% in 2022.
Polling has taken a hit this year, with examples such as the Wisconsin governor’s race, in which Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist and state representative, was ahead by about 20 points in most polls shortly before the August Democratic primary, but she ended up losing in a very tight race.
It is a given that most of the so-called mainstream media lean left, to say the least. And as such, polls are often exaggerated and used by certain media outlets to suppress the opposition to their favored candidate, in hopes of influencing the outcome rather than just serve as a neutral reflection, or a snapshot in time of where the race actually stands.
The polls are also often weighted to assume a larger number of Democrats, thus they might count 40% of the people they poll as Democrats, 30% as Republicans, and the rest as independents or undecided, to reach their conclusions, and we’re supposed to accept that that is truly representative of the specific population group being polled.
What the numbers really show is a group of voters who have moved away from both parties, and who are still weighing their options this fall.
That is an opportunity that Republicans used successfully in 2024. After four years of seeing President Trump being prosecuted and persecuted in Congress and courtrooms, Latino voters didn’t move right because of a slogan. They moved because they were concerned about prices, wages and a border that had spun out of control, while being assured by the Biden administration that the border was secure, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Border Czar. They were also sick and tired of being lectured to by a Democratic Party more interested in labels like “Latinx” than in paychecks.
While gas prices and inflation remain top concerns for Latino voters, they also see what the Trump administration has done in terms of securing the border and working to move much of Latin America away from socialist and communist influences, such as in the cases of Venezuela, Argentina, Panama, Colombia and Cuba.
Also, observers of the Dallas midterm convention were reminded of new tax breaks, including no tax on tips and overtime, the One Big Beautiful Bill that avoided one of the largest tax hikes in history, and battles to protect religious liberty and traditional American family values, such as keeping men and boys out of girls’ sports, and ending transgender indoctrination in K-12 schools.
The Republicans are also finally nominating candidates who are representative of the communities they want to represent.
For example, in South Texas, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, a former Democrat, is challenging Henry Cuellar. In the district that extends from Brownsville to Corpus Christi, former federal prosecutor and National Guard officer Eric Flores is running on the Republican ticket. The Texas Tribune is reporting that the number of Hispanic Republicans in Texas’ House delegation could triple next year.
While the issues of immigration policy and ICE enforcement of that policy remain as question marks in terms of how big a factor they will be in the upcoming election, for both the Latino population and the population in general, the hard truth is that we won’t know what all this amounts to in terms of upcoming election results until the night of November 3rd, or maybe beyond.
