Democratic Schadenfreude and the Latino Vote

“Trump’s once strong approval rating among Latinos has collapsed, but Democrats can’t count on their support.

By Jack HerreraJuly 14, 2026

After close to half of Latino voters chose Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats reacted like someone catching their grandpa giving money to a chatbot. “A lot of folks are asking on the Democratic side, ‘Why would they do this to themselves?’ ” the CNN anchor Jim Acosta said. He asked whether Latinos had “just had the wool pulled over their eyes.” Online, the reaction got ugly. Some posters (who claimed to be Kamala Harris voters) shared the tip-line number for ICE, encouraging their followers to call and report undocumented family members of Latinos who had voted for Trump. Those posts represented an angry fringe; however, even among levelheaded Democrats, I heard some species of vindictiveness. They understood why Latinos, buffeted by years of inflation and rising housing costs, had rejected Joe Biden. But they felt these voters would—and should—pay for supporting Trump.

For anyone who felt that way in 2024, reading polling conducted during the past year must’ve been a deeply gratifying experience. As ICE agents laid siege to Minneapolis and gas prices shot up after bombs began falling on Iran, numerous surveys showed Trump hemorrhaging support among Latino voters. A recent NBC News poll found that sixty-four per cent of Latinos disapproved of the job Trump was doing. Equis, a polling firm established to study Latino communities, has found that a third of all Latinos who supported the President in 2024 now feel “disappointed,” or outright regret their vote. The leading reason for this disappointment, according to Equis, was “Trump’s broken promises and lies.”