Hispanic voters are frustrated with Trump. Can Florida Democrats capitalize?

Politics admin September 25, 2026 0 Comments

Hispanic voters are frustrated with Trump. Can Florida Democrats capitalize?

With only 39 days until the election, Democrats gathered Friday in Miami Beach to court Hispanic voters as polling suggests South Florida Latinos who voted Republican in recent years are up for grabs.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who is running for reelection in Florida’s 25th Congressional District, said Hispanic voters are not only dealing with affordability issues but also the “fact that there are masked men walking the streets of America and snatching people out of their cars.”

Moskowitz said the local economy is taking a hit because people are afraid to go outside and visit local businesses due to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“It’s a double whammy here in South Florida,” he said during a press event at Tropical Beach Cafe in Miami Beach, which featured Suzan DelBene, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairwoman, and Pete Aguilar, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Moskowitz was also joined by several local leaders, including former U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower, Miami Beach commissioners Alex Fernandez and Laura Dominguez, and Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins.

A New York Times analysis found Hispanic voters are shifting towards Democrats. The polling suggests Democrats may have an opportunity to regain some of the Hispanic support lost to Trump in the 2024 presidential election, especially in Miami-Dade County, which Trump won just eight years after losing the county by almost 300,000 votes.

Aguilar said the Hispanic community is tired of the Republican agenda, which he says has failed to make the American dream affordable and attainable.

“Every one of their points is harmful to our community,” he said. “People are afraid to go to work. People are afraid to take their kids to school. That fear is resonating. That fear is frustrating for people.”

Another poll by Hart Research/TelevisaUnivision, conducted last month, shows that among 1,500 registered Hispanic voters in 17 battleground House districts, Democrats held a 58%-35% lead on a generic congressional ballot.

In Florida, the survey included 250 registered voters from across Florida’s 14th District, which includes the Tampa Bay area, and Moskowitz’s 25th District. These voters reported voting for Trump over Kamala Harris in 2024. When asked which congressional candidates they would support this year, Democrats led by 52% to 39%.

While the poll results don’t represent every Hispanic voter in South Florida, they show that the Hispanic vote is still up for grabs.

The Hart Research/TelevisaUnivision poll found that three in five Hispanic voters in Florida disapproved of Trump’s job as president. Sixty-one percent said they disapproved of his performance — primarily due to skyrocketing costs and immigration.

Trump’s low rating does not mean it will translate into loyalty for Democrats.

Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision, said that though recent polls show Hispanic voters leaning toward Democrats, it does not mean they will vote that way. He said Hispanics don’t feel their economic needs are being met and that is swaying them to the Democratic Party, but “in no way is the Hispanic vote won.”

He said Hispanic voters are not voting based on party but on issues, and right now affordability is the overriding concern for most voters.

“It’s all about cost of living, you know. It’s cost of living in terms of inflation, gas prices, healthcare,” he said. “Those are absolutely number one, number two, and number three for Hispanics.”

When Miami labor unions knocked on the doors of 32,000 Hispanic voters between March 21 and June 27, 77% of respondents said economic conditions were worsening and that they were struggling to afford food, childcare and housing.

Alegre said that for either party to win over this voting bloc, they need to communicate with Hispanic voters in Spanish.

In an August Morning Consult survey of 4,528 Hispanic adults nationwide, respondents were randomly divided into two groups and shown ads in Spanish and English. Fifty-nine percent of participants said a Spanish ad made them more likely to turn out to vote, and 57% said it made them take the candidate more seriously.

DelBene, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairwoman, said frustration with the Republican Party has been building in Florida for a while now, with state candidates like Brian Nathan flipping District 14 blue in the state Senate. She said affordability issues were driving voters to want something different, and the Democrats had the “secret sauce” — which she described as “great candidates” running to “represent their communities and not just be a rubber stamp for the executive.”

“All you hear from Republicans is they’re going to support Trump. In fact, they talk about that over and over how they’re going to support Trump, not how they’re going to support the people of Florida,” she said.

‘Marginal’ impact by immigration enforcement

Last week, an ad by Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, running for reelection in Florida’s 27th District, said that Trump’s immigration enforcement had gone too far and that Hispanic voters felt betrayed. Her shift from Trump hints at anger among the Hispanic voter base in places like Doral, where the discourse around an immigration crackdown has taken center stage and drawn backlash from the community.

But not all Republicans agree with the idea that their Hispanic base might be unraveling.

Jamie Florez, the Hispanic communications director of the Republican National Committee, scoffed at recent polling suggesting a shift in Hispanic voters towards Democrats. He said Hispanic voters still broadly support Trump’s tough approach of securing the border and this is just “a lot of fuzz that is being created by Democrats because they have nothing else to show, so they try to destroy what we already have built.”

Florez acknowledges that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detaining and deporting immigrants is “sad” and could sometimes “look even cruel,” but he said they are enforcing the law and the “law has to be respected. Everybody has to understand that. Particularly those that want to come and live in the United States in a legal way.”

“We regret the fact that some of the actions that ICE is doing don’t look very well, and in some cases they must be subject to some kind of reform,” he said. “But in terms of form, in terms of what they’re doing, we all agree that had to be done.”

He said that if there is any shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democratic Party because of immigration enforcement, its impact would be “marginal,” and that Republican internal polling shows they are doing “very well.”

Florez said he could not disclose the internal poll data to the Herald.

In Doral, businesses reported a 70% drop in sales due to empty streets because of immigration raids.

Alegre said the immigration crackdown is reducing foot traffic at restaurants and retailers, negatively affecting the economy.

“A lot of the people that are hired in those retail shops or restaurants are Hispanic, so they’re getting impacted,” he said. “So it really all comes down to cost of living.”