Is President Donald Trump losing the winning coalition he built just a year ago?
He's been the subject of premature political obituaries before -- but Republicans are worried about signs that his gains with Hispanics are evaporating.
Trump stunned pundits last year by very nearly winning the Hispanic vote outright.
A constituency Democrats had come to take for granted suddenly seemed ready to realign with Republicans.
But the numbers from the off-year elections earlier this month tell a different story.
New Jersey townships with high proportions of Hispanic voters shifted heavily to the Democrats in the state's race for governor, according to a New York Times analysis of exit polls:
"Nine of the 10 townships that shifted the most toward Democrats from 2024 to 2025 had a Hispanic population of at least 60 percent."
There's less data from Virginia on Hispanic voting, but the results there appear to tell the same story, while Hispanic communities in California backed Gov. Gavin Newsom's referendum to redraw the Golden State's congressional districts to give Democrats more seats.
"(T)he county with the highest share of Hispanic residents, Imperial, voted 59 percent to 41 percent" for Newsom's plan, according to the Times -- though Trump won the Mexico-adjacent county last year.
If this is a backlash against Trump's immigration crackdown, the GOP is in a bind. The issue is integral to the MAGA agenda and nonnegotiable with the party's base.
It's true that off-year elections have nothing like the massive turnout of presidential contests, and with fewer people voting, it takes far fewer people to produce a big swing.
Hispanics moved to the Democrats by significantly bigger margins than other constituencies, but it's possible that the most politically active Hispanics -- the most likely to vote even in an off-year -- are disproportionately Democratic.
Trump is known for doing exceptionally well with "low-propensity" voters of all backgrounds, who often don't turn up at all if Trump isn't on the ballot.
But it's not only these election results that are sounding the alarm. Opinion polling of Hispanics also shows Trump's support plummeting.
(Though polls have been wrong about Trump before, of course.)
The economic concerns weighing on all voters weigh on Hispanics as well, and as a heavily working-class demographic, Hispanics may be especially alarmed by the high price of beef and other staples at the supermarket.
According to a survey by the polling firm Equis conducted before the elections this month, Hispanic support for Trump on "cost of living" is 40 points lower now than it was in 2024, the biggest change in his Hispanic approval levels. (He's lost 24 points with them on immigration.)
Nevertheless, the media spectacle of ICE rounding up Hispanic illegal immigrants or raiding Hispanic-owned bakeries and other small businesses adds to the strain on the winning coalition Trump built in 2024, even if Hispanic citizens also want to see stronger border enforcement and a crackdown on unlawful migration.
The administration has to stand firm on immigration control without unnecessarily alienating the Hispanic voters Republican need -- and who've already shown they're willing to give Trump a chance.
One way Trump can do this is by emphasizing that his exertions against illegal immigration aren't only directed at those who come from Latin America.
There's also a need to prioritize -- and publicize -- the worst offenders, countering the media's tendency to promote only the most sympathetic migrants' stories.
Beyond that, the administration should reinforce its ties to American Hispanics, particularly those who own small businesses.
It's wishful thinking when CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enten says, "Latinos hate Donald Trump" -- his overperformance with them, compared to what all analysts expected, is proof of that.
What Trump and other Republicans have to do is show the relationship goes both ways, with Hispanic citizens a vital component of the GOP coalition.
There's no lack of prominent Hispanic leaders in the GOP -- some of them, notably Sen. Ted Cruz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with presidential aspirations.
But what came within a hair's breadth of winning a majority of Hispanics for the Republican presidential ticket last year wasn't running a Hispanic candidate. It was running a candidate who stood firmly for both immigration restriction and working-class opportunity -- Donald Trump.
What Trump did in 2024, the GOP can do again: MAGA is more compelling to Hispanics than the halfhearted compromises Republicans served up before Trump.
But MAGA can't afford to be tone deaf, and the Trump administration should take to heart the warnings polls and the latest election results are delivering.
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