The durability of GOP gains with Texas Latinos heading into midterm elections is being tested by perceived missteps in federal immigration policy, some Republicans and analysts say.
Early political signals suggest Latino voters in parts of Texas may be rethinking their support for President Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans heading into the March 3 primary. Trump captured about half of Latino voters in Texas in 2024, according to post-election estimates—a notable jump from the roughly 34% share he posted in 2016, according to exit polling analysis from the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project. He is due back in Texas on Friday, where he is expected to campaign for House Republicans.
“One of the things we need to watch is whether those gains were unique to Trump or translate to Republicans more broadly when he’s not on the ballot,” said Texas-based GOP political consultant Derek Ryan, who previously worked for former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R).
Other Republicans argue the movement runs deeper than a single candidate.
“The shift we’ve seen in South Texas has been driven by former Democrats like myself who believe the modern liberal Democratic Party has taken Latino families for granted,” said Tano Tijerina, a Trump-backed Republican challenging Rep.
Texas is now a Hispanic-plurality state with a competitive Senate race on the ballot, and the primary will offer an early test of Latino voter sentiment.
Latinos make up a majority of the voting-age population in four of the five new congressional districts that Republicans are seeking to flip under mid-decade redistricting, including those held by Cuellar and Rep.
Democrats are also targeting two-term Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R) in the reconfigured 15th District, an 81% Hispanic constituency stretching from the US-Mexico border to central Texas. Tejano musician Bobby Pulido faces physician Ada Cuellar in the Democratic primary.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said during a Feb. 25 Bloomberg Government breakfast that her party sees an opportunity to claw back support in Latino communities and flip districts as it works toward the three-seat net gain needed to reclaim the majority. DelBene said Latinos “see the damage being done to their community” and GOP support “is cratering” within them.
“Midterms for an incumbent president’s party just never really turn out too well,” Ryan said in an interview, adding that negative coverage of the Trump administration’s enforcement strategy could be softening some Latino and swing voters.
Conditional Gains
Other Some Republicans counter that long-term trends still favor the GOP. An uptick in Republican candidate recruitment and outreach in South Texas communities that had long leaned Democratic make Republicans bullish, said James Dickey, a Republican consultant and former state party chair.
Republican gains among Latino voters have been building for several cycles, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, where economic messaging and border security politics reshaped Democratic strongholds.
But some observers say those gains may have been conditional.
“The administration has squandered this amazing lead they had with Latino voters,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the US Hispanic Business Council, calling the enforcement activity “complete chaos.”
Jason Villalba, chairman and CEO of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and a former Republican state lawmaker similarly argued Democratic messaging missteps in past cycles—including some calls to defund the police in a region where many families work in law enforcement—combined with Trump’s personal appeal to some Latino men helped drive the GOP surge more than a wholesale ideological shift.
“They were willing to give Republicans a chance,” Villalba said.
Primary results may offer an early read on whether those gains amount to a temporary reaction or something more durable, observers said.
Republican mapmakers drew several congressional and state legislative districts expecting Latino voters would continue trending toward the GOP after 2024. But if that movement softens—even marginally—Republicans could find themselves defending terrain they once viewed as newly secure, placing Latino voter sentiment at the center of the 2026 battlefield.
“Both parties understand this is a vote that needs to be taken seriously,” Palomarez said. “In Texas, you’re not going to get there without the Hispanic vote.”
Early Indicators
The Jan. 31 special election in Texas Senate District 9—a heavily Republican Fort Worth-area seat where Hispanic Texans account for just over one in five eligible voters—has served as a siren call.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet won with 57% of the vote. VoteHub, a nonpartisan election data and modeling firm, estimated Rehmet captured about 79% of the Hispanic vote, a 26-point jump from the 53% that went to Kamala Harris in 2024 in the district.
“If I were a GOP consultant, I’d be quite concerned,” Villalba said. He added that economic anxiety—shared across the broader electorate—combined with aggressive immigration enforcement is driving the movement. “I think Latinos are nervous.”
Democratic officials in border communities describe similar unease from a different vantage point.
“There is a sense that the federal government is not there for us,” said Democratic state Rep.
Polling suggests the shift may not be isolated. Trump won Texas Latino voters in 2024 by 8 points, 53% to 45%. But when the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan–Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs surveyed voters last fall about a hypothetical rematch, Latino respondents gave Harris an 11-point edge, 52% to 41%. That reversal suggests projections built around Trump’s Latino 2024 strength in Texas could overstate Republican strengths in 2026.
Greg Giroux in Washington also contributed to this story.
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