This week, President Donald Trump solidified his grip on the Republican Party and kept it in his MAGA image when his endorsed candidate Attorney General Ken Paxton beat Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff for Texas’s Republican primary for Senate.
Trump endorsed Paxton despite his numerous scandals and the fact that Republicans pleaded with Trump to endorse the four-term incumbent Cornyn. Now, Republicans will need to spend an inordinate amount of money in Texas to stop Paxton from losing to Democratic nominee James Talarico – a loss that could help turn the tide in Democrats’ favor in control of the Senate.
But during Tuesday’s runoff, something particular happened: People in the majority Hispanic districts that Trump flipped in 2024 didn’t show up.
In Zapata County, only 28 people voted in total during the Republican runoff. By contrast, during the Democratic primary in March, almost 2,700 people voted for either Talarico or Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
It’s a sign that Trump’s approval among Hispanics, with whom he made historic inroads for a Republican in 2020 and 2024, are turning against him.
A poll from UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organization, surveyed Latino voters from across 32 congressional districts and found that 66 percent of Hispanic voters say Trump and Republicans in Congress are not focused on the economy. Moreover, a quarter of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 said they would not do so today.
But in a narrative buster, Hispanic voters are focused more focused on the cost of living than immigration, with 60 percent of voters saying that the cost of living is their top priority and immigration ranks fifth on the list.
“The broken promises of Donald Trump to advance peace and lower costs have proven exactly that: lies,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told The Independent last week. “Latinos see it for what it is.”
That should not give Democrats a sense of security though. For Latinos, Democrats lead the generic ballot, at 54 percent compared to 27 percent who would prefer a Republican.
But 46 percent of Latinos overall said they are motivated to vote to support their community, compared to 34 percent who say they are motivated to vote to support their candidates. By contrast, 52 percent of Latino Republicans say they are motivated to vote to support their candidates.
The narrative seems to be clear: Latino voters are upset with Trump because they do not think he has their best interests at heart, but it does not mean that they are becoming partisan Democrats.
The same could be said about another group that delivered the White House to Trump: young men. During the 2024 election, Trump engaged with “manosphere” podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von while also saying he would adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. A report from Tufts University after the election showed that 58 percent of men between 18 and 29 without a degree backed Trump.
But Lucas Holtz, a senior advisor at the centrist Democratic group Third Way who published a study about Democrats’ woes with young men, said Trump is in deep trouble.
“Those very moderates, we need lower propensity young men who went for Trump in 2024 are far, far less likely to turn out in the midterms,” he told The Independent. “The midterms are very much false positive for Democrats. We do really well in midterm elections, but there’s a steep drop-off in presidential years.”
Texas’ Talarico has attempted to make inroads with this group of disaffected young men, even going on Rogan’s show, which prompted Rogan to say Talarico should run for president.
Holtz warned that many young people had “Trumpnesia” from his first presidency and just remember policies such as giving out stimulus checks during the Covid-19 pandemic and now people are remembering why they opposed him.
But he warned that just because Democrats will likely have a good night during the 2026 midterms, it does not mean they have fixed their problems with young men and Hispanic voters.
Until recently, Democrats thought they had a good chance to flip the House but faced an uphill battle to win back the Senate. Now, after Trump’s economic missteps, they believe they can flip Senate seats not just in Maine and North Carolina, but also Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and, yes, Texas.
Trump’s fumbling of the cost of living, his draconian immigration policies and his war of choice in Iran just might be the correct number of rakes to step on to hand the Senate to Democrats.
