In 2024 Donald Trump carried 55% of the Latino vote in Texas, up from around 41% in 2020. He also won 14 of 18 counties in heavily-Latino South Texas, within 20 miles of the Mexican border, doubling his showing from four years earlier.

But as the midterms approach, support for Trump and the Republican Party among Latino voters in the Lone Star State and elsewhere is dwindling, according to new reports. A poll last month found that 22% of Texan Latino voters who previously supported the President would oppose a Republican House candidate, while 18% disapprove of the job Trump is doing.

Are Hispanic voters reverting to their traditional preference for the Democratic Party? For a long time, two-thirds have leaned toward Democrats and only a third or so toward Republicans. Yet the issue for both parties lies in treating Latino voters as a homogeneous bloc.

The Latino category includes Mexican-Americans (60%), Puerto Ricans (14%) and Cubans (a mere 4%). And among Latinos, as with any ethnic group, regional culture influences politics. Texans in general tend to be more conservative than Californians; before the last midterm elections in 2022, 40% of Latinos in Texas described themselves as conservative compared to only 28% in California. Recent increases in Republican identification have included large numbers of Latino conservatives, suggesting that they are switching their party identity without changing their views as the Democratic party lurches to the Left.

On multiple major issues, the opinions of Latinos — who make up around 40% of the Texas population — closely track those of all Texans. According to a Univision poll, 53% of Latinos consider inflation a “paramount national problem” compared to 51% of all Texans. This is followed by 47% of all Texans and 46% of Latino Texans who view “jobs and the economy” as a major issue. On social issues as well, their ethnicity is less important than other characteristics. Hispanic Catholics, for instance, and the religiously unaffiliated support same-sex marriage at much higher levels than Protestant Hispanics, who tend to be evangelicals.

There are, however, real differences between GOP Latinos and other Republicans. While 73% of Texans who voted for Trump would repeat their vote, the proportion of Latino Trump voters who say the same is lower at 64%. And though Latino Texans rank the economy above immigration as a voting issue, 61% also have an unfavorable view of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), often fearing being racially profiled.

The Latino backlash against the Trump administration’s enforcement policies does not mean most agree with “open-borders” policies. Here again, Latino “normie” voters tend to share the views of non-Latino “normies” — yes to more border security, no to mass deportations of non-violent illegal immigrants.

Yet instead of treating most Latinos as the centrist swing voters that they are, Republicans are trying to appeal to them through the lens of the Fox-watching GOP base. In August, House Speaker Mike Johnson, campaigning in South Texas for Republican congressional candidate Monica De La Cruz, warned that Democrats might “elect enough Marxist communists to take over the whole thing”.

But this kind of red-baiting is unlikely to succeed: even Latino Republicans are much more likely to agree that the government “should do more to solve problems” (51%), compared with non-Latino Republicans (22%). Opposition to biological males in female sports plays well among Texan Latinos, but it is not an issue identified as major by many voters. If Republicans continue to try and appeal to Latino voters by making the November midterms about transgender communism, it will be the Democrats who stand to gain.