turns out 'deport your abuela' is a bad latino outreach strategy
RNC strategists stare at a bar chart showing Latino support collapsing and wonder if maybe, just maybe, family separation and random deportations weren’t the outreach flex they thought.
Republicans spent 2024 declaring they had cracked the code on Latino voters: just shout "¡Viva Trump!" over the sound of ICE raids and everything would sort itself out. Two years later, NBC finds Latino voters giving Democrats a 24-point edge on who should control Congress, a 21-point advantage on the economy, and a giant middle finger to Trump’s deportation state. The big strategic insight from the GOP appears to have been, "What if we gerrymander a bunch of heavily Latino districts in Texas and Florida and just assume nobody will notice when we terrorize their families?" Shockingly, people noticed.
Trump is underwater with Latino voters on the cost of living (78% disapprove), the economy (74%), immigration (69%), and foreign policy (68%). Even on his alleged signature issue, border security, he’s still losing 58%-39%. Voters describe his deportation policies as "brutal" and "cold," with two-thirds saying enforcement has gone too far, while poll respondents casually mention friends and relatives being deported to the wrong country because this administration runs immigration like a drunk airline.
Meanwhile, Latino voters are carrying IDs everywhere out of fear of ICE, know people detained or deported in the last two years, and some are considering leaving the U.S. or skipping in-person voting because of enforcement fears — a chilling little side effect of Trump’s governance-by-intimidation. Republicans dreamed of a durable Latino realignment; what they got instead is a case study in what happens when you confuse "swing voters" with "people you can endlessly harass and they’ll still thank you for it."
