Despite former president Donald Trump’s continued rhetoric about immigration, particularly along the southern U.S. border, his support is growing among Hispanics — with most saying Trump’s remarks are not about them, a new poll shows.
Trump’s remarks on immigration have long inflamed his opponents on the left — and some influential voices on the right — who have accused him of demonizing immigrants in order to score political points, with the bulk of his attention focused on the flow of undocumented immigrants coming into the United States from Latin America.
But a majority of Hispanic voters say they don’t take his words personally.
According to the poll, released Oct. 13, 63% of Hispanic likely voters said “I do not feel like he is talking about me,” when it comes to Trump discussing “problems with immigration.” A third of those polled, 33%, said “I feel like he is talking about me.”
The recent New York Times and Siena College poll collected the opinions of nearly 3,400 voters across the nation between Sept. 29 through Oct. 6, and the Hispanic voter results are a subset of that data, accounting for 902 respondents. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 1.9 points for the sample of Hispanic voters.
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On its face, Trump’s immigration rhetoric might seem like a surefire way to alienate Hispanic Americans, many of whom are the children of recent immigrants or immigrants themselves. And while it’s true most Hispanic voters have an unfavorable view of Trump — 56%, per the poll — that hasn’t stopped him from making gains with the group.
Of those polled, 25% said they voted for Trump in 2020, and 37% say they’ll vote for him in 2024.
In 2020, 47% of Hispanic voters said they cast their ballots for Biden. In the current election, 56% said they’ll do the same for Harris.
That’s a 12-point gain for Trump and a 9-point gain for Harris compared to Biden.
It’s possible that the big issues touted by the left, things like abortion and LGBTQ rights, just don’t resonate with Hispanic voters as much as issues like inflation and economic issues, The Hill reported. To many, the economy felt stronger during the Trump administration as opposed to the post-pandemic economy Biden has presided over.
Nearly half of Hispanics polled say Trump said something “recently” that offended them, and another 23% said he’d offended them at some other point. But how much do words, offensive or not, really matter to voters in the scheme of things?
A greater number of Hispanic voters, 35%, said Trump’s policies helped them “personally,” whereas 22% said the Biden administration helped them. Biden’s presidency was even seen as more harmful than Trump’s, with 34% saying Biden’s policies hurt them while 30% said the same about Trump.
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