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Much attention has been paid recently to polls showing President Donald Trump having seriously low job approval ratings among Hispanics. One recent Pew Research Center poll of Latinos shows the news, while still possibly challenging for Trump and the GOP, might be better than one would think.

Trump made news last year when he received 46% of the Latino vote, per exit polls. This was the highest total ever received by a Republican presidential candidate in exit polls since 1968, surpassing the 44% received by then-President George W. Bush, a former Texas governor, in 2004.

That massive shift, coupled with higher-than-normal support from Asians and other racial minorities, is why Trump won the popular vote. These movements also helped him win the electoral vote, especially in states such as Arizona and Nevada.

This explains why Trump’s low job approval among Hispanics in most polls is so disturbing for Republicans. The most recent Economist-YouGov poll, for example, showed Trump with only 35% job approval among Hispanics, down from 42% shortly after his inauguration. Other polls show him doing better, but still below his share of the Latino vote from last year.

The results in Hispanic areas in last month’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections also point to trouble for the GOP. NBC analyst Steve Kornacki notes that Gov.-elect Mikie Sherill (D-NJ) improved dramatically upon 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s showing in New Jersey Hispanic towns. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) also appeared to be more favorable among Hispanics.

That’s why the Pew poll is so interesting. It surveyed over 4,900 Hispanics for its results, much more than the average poll. This allowed it to delve deeply into the Hispanic community to identify trends among different subdemographics, providing a much richer view of Hispanic public opinion than is typically afforded by most media polls.

Most importantly, Pew employs a validation process to ensure that people who claim to be registered voters or who cast a ballot last year actually did so. This allows it to provide breakdowns of what actual Hispanic voters think, as opposed to most polls, which have no way of filtering out Hispanic noncitizens whose opinions cannot affect the election.

This distillation shows some rays of sunshine for Trump and Republicans. Despite all the news over the last year, only 53% of possible Hispanic voters are or lean toward Democrats, further identifying 45% of voters as Republicans or leaning toward the GOP. The 8-point margin is only slightly larger than Harris’s 5-point margin in 2024 exit polling.

Trump’s own job approval rating also remains relatively high among those who voted for him. Pew found that 81% of Hispanic voters who supported Trump approve of his job performance, not far off from the overall 83% of Trump voters who approve of his performance in the most recent Economist/YouGov poll.

Much of the overall opposition to Trump among Hispanics, then, comes from those who backed Harris — just as is the case among non-Hispanic Harris voters. So long as Trump keeps the Hispanics who voted for him, the overall results are much less politically relevant.

Trump-voting Hispanics even tend to support his controversial immigration policies. Sixty-nine percent of these voters support his immigration policies, while only 18% disapprove — the remainder neither approve nor disapprove. Eighty-four percent of Hispanic Republicans think some or all illegal immigrants should be deported, and 80% either do not worry or do not worry much about themselves, a family member, or a close friend being deported.

Trump-backing Hispanics, then, seem to view the president in much the same way as Trump backers overall. It is clear he has lost support from some people who voted for him last year. It is not clear that Hispanic voters are usually disposed to abandon him or the GOP.

Not all of Pew’s news was good, however. Republicans should be concerned about what the poll shows regarding people who did not vote in 2024. They may still regard the GOP favorably, but they are much more negative about Trump and his immigration policies than are Trump backers.

Trump sports only a 27% job approval rating among nonvoting Hispanics, despite the fact that 46% of this group at least leans toward Republicans. That’s a lot of possible voters who are upset, combined with a large number of nonvoting Democrats who also disapprove of Trump.

This group strongly disapproves of Trump’s immigration policies. Sixty-two percent of eligible Hispanic voters who chose not to vote disapprove of those policies. They are also more likely than Hispanic Trump supporters to worry that themselves, a family member, or a close friend would be deported. Forty-eight percent of this group worry some or a lot about this, compared with only 20% of Trump supporters.

Put all of this together, and one can see the possibility that nonvoting Hispanics will be energized to cast a midterm ballot against the policies they despise and fear.

Trump and the GOP also need to worry about the effect the economy is having on Hispanics. The poll finds that even 56% of Republican-leaning Hispanics think the economy is only either fair or poor. That’s not too surprising, given that the poll also finds that large numbers of Latino adults have had trouble either paying for food or energy in the last year and that many are worried about losing their jobs or having their pay cut.

These findings, taken together, should point the GOP’s way forward: It needs to find a way to reduce concerns over deportations while improving the economy.

On the first point, that means that Trump should reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids so that they are carried out in a less confrontational and more consistent manner. Going into workplaces to arrest people known to be in the country illegally is one thing. Doing dragnet raids where they detain anyone who is not currently carrying papers that prove they are citizens and sorting people out later is another.

Republicans in Congress should also consider passing a law that mandates employers to use E-Verify and denies businesses tax deductions for wages paid to employees who are not legally authorized to work in the United States. This has both a political and an economic effect. 

The political effect is to place a reasonable immigration measure before Congress, elevating the issue before the midterm elections. Democrats will likely vociferously oppose it, which heightens the partisan divide on how and whether to control our borders. Either the bill passes, in which case illegal immigrants start to leave themselves when they can no longer support themselves, or it fails, with all the blame put on the Democrats. Win-win for Trump and the GOP.

The economic effect is what would happen in the illegal immigrant community when this becomes a priority. Some will leave because they see their time here is coming to an end. Some with more sympathetic cases, when a person who has been here undetected for years and has no criminal record, for example, will try to plead their case for mercy. In all cases, though, doing this forces the issue of how to solve our illegal immigrant problem to the front and likely leads to more quiet departures, making ICE’s job easier.

Trump should appreciate this, despite the burden on business, because it gives him leverage. Once illegal immigrants get turned away from jobs or fired, the pro-migrant lobby has to act fast or lose its constituency. That’s the immigration policy version of how Trump used tariffs to push countries to revamp their trading policies toward the U.S. overnight.

If that happens, Trump will become everyone’s hero — Trump supporters see that he enforced our laws, while others will see that he made the deal that prevents the worst from happening and solves a vexing problem. All of those Republican Hispanics, then, can no longer be driven away from the party by an overly aggressive implementation of a policy they largely agree with.

The economy will, of course, be a much tougher nut to crack. The fact is that Trump’s tariffs inevitably will cause short-term pain, partly felt in higher prices, before the long-term gain in jobs and higher wages comes into existence.

CLOSING THE DOOR ON IMMIGRATION? NOT YET

Trump should lean into that and level with people. That’s what President Ronald Reagan did in 1982 as Reaganomics was beginning to crush inflation and unleash the supply side of American business. He couldn’t avert a midterm defeat, but he reaped the enormous benefits in his 1984 reelection when his program delivered as promised.

Hispanics may be unhappy with Republicans right now, but the Pew poll suggests they have the possibility to solidify the gains made in recent years. Focus on that, and the GOP’s future with Latinos can still be bright.