WASHINGTON – A year after former Vice President Kamala Harris suffered colossal losses to President Donald Trump, Democrats on Nov. 4 roared back, sweeping gubernatorial, mayoral and local elections from coast to coast.
Those wins, in part, were fueled by a return of Latino voters, particularly Latino men, many of whom the party lost in the 2024 presidential election.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race with 67% support among Latino voters, including 55% among Latino men, according to CNN exit polling. In Manassas Park, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, where more than 40% of residents are Hispanic, preliminary results show Spanberger strongly outperformed Harris.
Further north, in New Jersey, a state with about a 20% Latino population, Democrat Mikie Sherrill trounced her Republican opponent. She won the support of 68% of Latino voters, according to CNN exit polling, with large margins of victory among all age groups.
For activists who’ve been tracking Latino voters’ political views since the start of Trump’s presidency, the shift didn’t come as a surprise. Polls in the last nine months have shown drooping support for Trump and Republicans among this key voting bloc.
A survey of 3,000 Latino voters published just days before the 2025 elections found nearly two-thirds disapproved of Trump’s job performance and how the Republican Party is leading Congress. Of those who voted for Trump, 13% said they would not do so if given the same choice today.
“Latino voters are very pragmatic,” said Melissa Morales, president of Somos Votantes, a left-leaning Latino voter mobilization organization. “They are not necessarily going to vote based on party labels. They’re going to vote for whoever is actually addressing their priorities.”
Though the signs appear encouraging for Democrats, Morales and other experts warn that as much as the party will need to compete against Republicans in 2026, there’s another, potentially larger foe they’ll need to contend with: voter apathy.
Is Latino support for Republicans really dwindling?
Since May, polls by Somos Votantes have shown Hispanic and Latino support for Trump and Republicans slipping as concerns about the U.S. economy continue to fester.
The number of Hispanic and Latino voters who viewed the U.S. economy as poor remained at 64% between May and September of this year, while those who believed the economy was getting worse trended upward by 3%, according to data from Somos Votantes.
President Donald Trump holds his fist up after delivering remarks at the America Business Forum in Miami, Florida, U.S., November 5, 2025.
Over a quarter of those polled in September said they had trouble meeting their monthly expenses.
Voters, the organization found, expressed frustation with the administration’s focus on immigration enforcement over affordability.
Many, they found, viewed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s approach to stopping people based on their ethnicity and spoken language to be racist. But overall, voters expressed more concern about the economy than about the administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement.
The trend, Morales said, should come as a giant, blinking warning sign for Republicans, who ran in 2024 on promises to decrease inflation and improve the cost of living for everyday Americans.
Early in Trump’s presidency, Morales said, Latino voters appeared to be giving the president the benefit of the doubt. They were taking a “wait and see” approach, she said.
“Now for young Latinos and Latino men,” she said, “that wait-and-see period has really ended,” adding that Trump’s economic approval among young Latinos has cratered 32% since February. Of those polled, she said 71% said Trump’s tariff policies were increasing the prices of goods they bought.
The Unidos poll of 3,000 Latino voters, published Nov. 3, further underscored just how much the economy was beginning to sway voter sentiment.
When asked about the top issue they were concerned about, 53% of respondents cited the cost of living and inflation, while 36% noted wages and job security and 32% stressed rising housing and electricity costs. Immigration ranked below economic issues, with 20% of respondents describing it as a key priority.
Too soon to tell?
Still, many Latino voters who supported Trump’s 2024 campaign say they’re happy with the president’s job in office so far.
Joe Nanez is a 43-year-old self-described Democrat who voted for Trump in 2024 after he said he felt Democrats lied about former President Joe Biden’s health. Nanez, from Redrock, Arizona, said he believes Trump is trying to “make change.”
“I don’t agree with a lot of stuff that he does say, but at least he’s transparent about who he is and what he wants instead of just lying,” Nanez said.
In a call the day after the 2025 election, Nanez told USA TODAY he was concerned about Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race, and expressed concern that Mamdani, a rising progressive figure who has advocated for freezing rent prices and opening city-owned grocery stores, was too “radical left.”
Voters like Nanez are why Daniel Garza, president of the center-right Latino advocacy organization Libre, believes it’s too early to predict how much Latino voters will support Republicans in pivotal 2026 midterm races.
Garza suggested that some measures of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill haven’t gone into effect yet, including tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. When voters feel those changes, he said, Republicans could gain ground.
“The big question is gonna be: Where will we be in March, April, May?” Garza said. “That’ll be huge for Latinos in deciding how effective Trump has been because by then his policies will have taken place.”
Can Dems win them back?
Political pundits have interpreted Democrats’ Nov. 4 wins in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, Pennsylvania and California as a repudiation of Trump’s agenda. But Latino political activists USA TODAY spoke with cautioned that voters who turn their back on Trump won’t necessarily embrace the Democratic Party.
The story in 2024 was more than Latino voters moving from Democrats to Trump, María Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino, a nonprofit Latino voting group, said. Many Latinos who voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election didn’t show up to vote in 2024, she said, citing Pew Research turnout data.
The reason? Democrats didn’t offer them anything to vote for, she said.
“Those who voted disproportionately for Trump were voting around economic issues. They wanted economic relief,” she said, and they didn’t believe Democrats were offering it.
Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Ken Martin speaks on stage during a campaign rally for Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., November 1, 2025.
But ICE raids aren’t just hitting the Latino voters personally, socially and culturally, they’re also hitting them financially, she said. Polls show that economic impacts are driving the voting bloc the most and Latino businesses across the country, from Miami to Los Angeles, are seeing a drop in foot traffic because of ICE agents targeting their communities.
“What they’re finding is that the people that support their local businesses, are Latino themselves and are getting spooked to do daily things that one takes for granted,” Kumar said.
This year, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, said candidates made a concerted effort to stress the kitchen-table and affordability issues affecting all voters, including Latinos. The party appears ready to double down on that messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Asked ahead of the Nov. 5 election if Democrats’ efforts to win back Latino voters was enough, Kumar responded “no.” Research Voto Latino has conducted shows Democrats still aren’t reaching young Latinos and Latino men online about important issues, she said.
“In this moment, while you may have policies to solve the problem, what you really need is a communication strategy that is unconventional from how you may be used to participating,” Kumar said. “That means taking risks.”
Martin acknowledged the work the party has ahead of it to garner more support among Latinos and other groups before upcoming elections. But he and other Democratic leaders see the 2025 wins as the first step of the journey.
“We didn’t lose all that ground with these communities in one election cycle. This has been going on for some time.” Martin said. “One election cycle isn’t going to solve all that. It’s going to take us some time to build back the trust.”
Karissa Waddick, a reporter on USA TODAY’s Nation desk, can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Republicans are losing Latino voters. Can Dems win them back?
