Latino Voters Really Don’t Like Donald Trump, And That’s Hurting The GOP As A Whole
Another poll shows that Latino voters are set to reject Donald Trump in record numbers, and now they're turning against the GOP.
Another poll shows that Donald Trump is performing atrociously bad among Latino Voters, and that it’s beginning to have a real impact on the Republican Party’s relationship with Latino voters:
Donald Trump’s speech on immigration this week — with its full blown xenophobia, its broad brush portrayal of undocumented immigrants as invaders and criminals, and its flat-out nixing of any meaningful path to assimilation — is the stuff of nightmares for GOP operatives who believe their party’s perilous standing with Latinos has left it teetering on the edge of a demographic abyss.
A new poll of over 3,000 Latino voters just released today will not do much to assuage these fears.
The poll, which was commissioned by America’s Voice and conducted by Latino Decisions, finds Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 70-19 among Latinos. That’s worse than Mitt Romney’s 27 percent in 2012.
But buried in the crosstabs are these findings that suggest Trump may also be damaging the GOP’s image among them pretty badly:
* Only 21 percent of Latinos say the Republican Party truly cares about the Latino community. (Forty five percent say the GOP doesn’t care too much about them, and 28 percent say it is hostile to them, a total of 73 percent.) By contrast, 56 percent say the Democratic Party truly cares about them.
* 70 percent of Latinos say that Trump has made the Republican Party “more hostile” to them. By contrast, 58 percent of Latinos say Hillary Clinton has made the Democratic Party “more welcoming” to them.
* 68 percent of Latinos say Trump’s views about immigrants and immigration make them less likely to vote for Republican candidates this November — with 58 percent saying those views have made them much less likely to do that. By contrast, 64 percent of Latinos say Clinton’s views make them either much more likely (43) or somewhat more likely (21) to vote for Dem candidates.
* 63 percent of Latinos say Trump’s opposition to Obama’s executive deportation relief for DREAMers (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) makes them less likely to vote for GOP candidates, with 53 percent saying they are much less likely.
* Latinos say they’ll vote for Democrats on the generic ballot by 60-14.
There is also some evidence that Trump may be galvanizing Latinos to turn out. Seventy six percent of Latinos say it’s more important to vote this year than it was in 2012, and of that group, a bare majority say this is because of the need to resist Trump and his views.
GOP consultant Ana Navarro emails that Trump could indeed be hurting the GOP long term:
“Trump’s fate has been decided with Latinos. Put a fork in him, he’s done. What we have to worry about now is that Trump does not do to the GOP nationally what Pete Wilson did to the GOP in California. He made the party brand less popular than Dengue Fever among Hispanics.”
It’s worth noting as a caveat that, as Greg Sargent does at the linked article, that the poll was commissioned by a pro-immigration group that is strongly opposed to Trump’s candidacy and that it was conducted via a combination of telephone and online surveying. However, the numbers that we get from this poll are largely similar to other recent polling of Latino Voters on the Presidential race and their opinion of the Republican Party in general. Sargent, for example, points to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll that 80% of Latinos view Trump unfavorably. Additionally, a recent Fox News Latino poll showed Clinton leading Trump among Latino Voters 66% to 20%. Additionally, previous polling has shown that Latino voters have an overwhelmingly negative opinion of Donald Trump and that the majority of the group was starting to line up behind Hillary Clinton in order to prevent him from becoming President of the United States. Earlier this year, for example, we learned that Latino’s who had previously delayed the process of becoming American citizens were applying for citizenship in near-record numbers so that they could have the right to vote against Trump in the fall. Trump, meanwhile, has done seemingly everything possible to turn away this growing group of voters from the day his campaign started.
As I’ve noted before, given the fact that such a large part of Trump’s campaign rhetoric from the day that he entered the race has been to target Latino immigrants as dangerous criminals, law breakers, and threats to the American way of life, it’s not surprising that Latino Voters as a whole would be reacting so negatively to him. Additionally, Trump’s position on immigration, including not only the idea of a border wall but also the idea of more aggressive deportation practices targeted at people who are in the country illegally and the position that no person who is in the country without proper documentation will be allowed to apply for legal status without first leaving the country and applying for legal status at an American embassy or consulate in their home country, is completely antithetical to where polling shows most Latino Americans stand on the issue. Combine that with the fact that even Trump’s Latino supporters seem to subscribe to an ideology that sees even legal immigration as a threat to American culture, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster for the Trump campaign. What ought to concern Republicans at this point, though, is that the nomination of Trump is, not surprisingly, turning Latinos against the GOP as a whole. While this may not be surprising, it is a change for just a few months ago when similar polling among Latino voters suggested that negative views of Trump were not impacting Latino opinion on the GOP as a whole. Now that he’s at the top of the ticket officially they’re taking it out on the GOP as a whole,, and that could have consequences that go far beyond the Trump candidacy.
Must be because Trump’s surrogates say illegal immigrant.
Progressive thought leader Joy Reid has been condemning them for saying ‘Illegals’ on her show.
Romney got 27% of the hispanic vote, like the article says.
In fact, here’s what GOP prez candidates have gotten since i entered kindergarten:
reagan 35
reagan 37
ghwb 30
ghwb 25
dole 21
gwb 35
gwb 40
mccain 31
romney 27
so hispanics dislike Trump a little more than the average GOP candidate, who they hate. Why? Same reason every minority hates republicans–they’re racist. That’s why even asians vote Democratic. (Obama got 74% of the asian vote last time)
@Paul L.:
I don’t personally like re-labeling as a tactic. It doesn’t work. Lewis Black has a joke about how we have, during the course of his lifetime, managed to re-label pro-abortion as pro-choice, and anti-abortion as pro-life . . . and made essentially no progress on defining the start of life or the underlying issue. African-Americans have been relabeled several times with no noticeable effect on black people’s lives one way or the other.
But that aside, there is no more fragile bunch of babies than right-wingers. Try calling an evangelical a holy roller, or a ‘fundie’ or a Christian religious fanatic. Or watch how hysterical conservatives get when someone says “Happy holidays” in lieu of “Merry Christmas.” Or, say, refuse to stand during the national anthem. Or say something perfectly true like, no, the 911 terrorists were not ‘cowards.’ Or say anything other than, ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’
PC is equal opportunity, both sides play the same dumb game. People don’t really understand how words work. They think speaking the right sequence of words is magic, like a Harry Potter spell.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post shows that Hillary’s losing support among Hispanics.
The “Latinos for Trump” founder, Marco Gutierrez, seems to have had a checkered past in the recent home foreclosure ‘rescue’ business because of course he would. He’s a Trump surrogate and a serial litigant & bankruptcy filer.
Bill Clinton delivered the same Immigration Proposals as Donald Trump, yet no-one called him a racist….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PK-SK0h9o
The exact same position, but the MEDIA calls Trump a racist.
Interesting that the headline is “Latino Voters Really Don’t Like Donald Trump, And That’s Hurting The GOP As A Whole” rather than “Donald Trump Is Offending Latino Voters, And That’s Hurting The GOP As A Whole”.
Give the man some credit for his actions. The Latino’s aren’t just spontaneously disliking Trump, Trump is working hard to make them dislike him.
@Jenos Idanian:
She went from 76% to 71%. A mild fluctuation. And this was before the effects of Trump’s disastrous trip to Mexico would show an effect in the polls.
Go ahead and hang your hat on that. Let’s see how that works out.
This is one thing you can’t blame on Trump. Republicans demogogued immigration for decades to the point where their own voters vehemently rejected George W. Bush’s efforts at reform. Then, having seen the issue had gotten out of their control, Republicans idiotically refused to let Obama save them from themselves by allowing his reform effort to succeed. The vast majority of Republicans could still have voted against it and it would have taken immigration policy out of the political debate, opening the door for the GOP to rebuild its relationship with Latinos. But they didn’t do any of that and specifically decided to just let the issue fester.
If you leave a loaded gun out and a toddler comes along and shoots someone with it, is it honestly the toddler’s fault. Yes, Trump is the toddler in this analogy.
Mike
@MBunge:
If the “toddler” is 70 years old, yes.
@Kylopod: I think Mike is right here about immigration. If the Republican “leadership” had any courage and foresight a few years ago it could be settled.
But the racism that Trump is showing would have come to the surface in other ways anyway. It is not just about illegal immigration or just about the Latino vote. And Trump is not principled enough to be running a racist campaign because that is his personal view. He is just holding up a big mirror to the Republican base and following what he sees there. He probably agrees, he certainly can speak the language of the racists without the teleprompter, but he did not take the party in this direction.
The owners, the stakeholders of the Republican Party must review their long term plans. Trump has not been the face or the soul of the party for years. He was recently chosen to be their leader after a primary process that struck me as bizarre. His actions on Mexico are not bugs; they are features chosen as deliberate catchphrases. Now the keepers of the GOP brand have to think whether there are enough Mike Huckabees to keep them in the game. More true believers or a bigger tent?
republicans have an and problem.
Imagine the future headline:
“Republicans won the presidency today, putting together a coalition of
semi-literate old white science-phobic christian racist trailer folkand…”
the problem is finding a group to put after the and.
@Thor thormussen:
Forget about finding other groups to buy into their policies, this seems to fit in more with their current planned election strategy.
Once we get a majority liberal SCOTUS, those racist voting laws are going to last as long as a big fluffy snowball lasts in hell.
@michael reynolds: Good points there. Not all Christians are religious, nor fanatics. Not all religious people are Christians. Not all fanatics are Christians.
I supported the Dream Act – it had good ideas and accountability. It also was a bi-partisan product.
Look, most of these people are coming here in search of opportunity and will scrounge for any work they can get.They are not wanting a bunch of hand outs from the government.
New definition of a speeder: accelerator challenged.
This is interesting: President Obama gets insulted, the cold shoulder, and the brush off by the Chinese !
@Tyrell:
Yeah, a small-minded dick move by a government that has an exaggerated notion of its own importance and power. Had it been me I’d have said, “OK, bye bye, I’m heading back to Washington.”
But then I’m the guy who dropped out of high school because when I used the wrong door to the school cafeteria a teacher told me to go back out and come in again through the proper door. Thus demonstrating why I should never be president.
@Tyrell:
Nothing new, right here in America the then Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, openly disrespected President: Obama.
Obama remained cool and calm and did not call her out on that.
Latino VotersIllegal aliens Really Don’t Like Donald Trump…Fixed it for ya’