Trump Is ‘Missing the Mark’ With Latino Voters in First 100 Days, New Poll Finds

“Worried, angry and afraid.”

That’s how most Latino voters say they’re feeling about President Donald Trump’s frenetic first 100 days in office, according to a new nationwide poll out this week from the San Francisco-based Latino Community Foundation and Voto Latino.

“The poll reflects that there’s a lot of anxiety, disappointment, and sometimes anger, especially around the economy,” said Julián Castro, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation. “People feel like the administration has made things worse in a lot of instances. And also they feel like he’s gone too far on immigration enforcement.”

The survey — of 1,000 Latino voters across the country who cast ballots in the 2024 election — found inflation and the cost of living to be the top concern (66%), followed by the economy and jobs (50%), and the cost of health care (34%).

“Across the board, whether you’re talking about the Latino community or just all Americans, people are giving him low marks for his handling of the economy,” said Castro, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, who previously served as U.S. secretary of housing and urban development during President Barack Obama’s second term.

The chaos and instability Trump has injected into the economy, through a barrage of tariffs and trade wars, have left voters feeling deeply concerned about “their own pocketbook and their family’s future,” Castro added.

“Time and again, when people have said they support him, it was because they believed that he could make the economy better. He’s not doing it. They feel like he’s made the economy worse,” Castro added, noting that continued economic instability could spell serious trouble for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

The poll, conducted in mid-April, also found that the surge in support for Trump among Latino voters, especially among young men, that helped propel him to the White House in November, had fallen considerably — from 46% in November to under 40%. That roughly tracks with the president’s overall approval rating of just 41%, the lowest for any newly elected president at the 100-day mark in at least seven decades, according to CNN.

More than 36 million Hispanic citizens in the U.S. were eligible to vote in 2024 — up 12% since 2020 — accounting for nearly 15% of the electorate.

Inflation and the cost of living were a serious concern for Latino voters before the election, and a big reason why many who didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 chose to back him this time around, said Elizabeth Sena of the polling firm GQR, which helped conduct the survey.

“The fact that he hasn’t been able to reduce that level of concern, I think, is really a standout issue,” she said. “So he’s very much missing the mark with what Latino voters want.”

A significant majority also said they were critical of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, with 63% saying it had gone too far in trying to stop illegal immigration and deport undocumented migrants.

More than 1 in 10 people surveyed said they know someone who has been deported since Trump took office, and nearly half said they feared for people in their communities.

Despite Trump’s campaign pledge to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, Castro said most Latino voters thought that the crackdown would be largely focused on people who had committed serious offenses.

“They convinced a large segment of the Latino community that who they really meant in terms of deporting people were people who were rapists and murderers and committed major crimes,” he said. “Not that they were going to deport people regardless of what they’ve done, even people that don’t have any kind of criminal record in the United States.”

A majority also had negative views of both major political parties, although Democrats fared slightly better, garnering 43% approval, compared to just 37% for Republicans.

In reviewing a list of political figures on the national stage, respondents had the most favorable impression of Bernie Sanders, the 83-year-old independent senator from Vermont who has drawn huge crowds across the country on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. More than 50% said they appreciated the self-described democratic socialist and the message he was delivering. (By contrast, just 33% held a favorable view of Vice President JD Vance, 31% of Elon Musk, and 18% of Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.)

“A lot of what Bernie’s talking about resonates with not only Latinos, but [all] Americans these days — about billionaires running the United States at the expense of regular everyday Americans,” Castro said. “Perhaps there’s no politician right now whose message more meets the moment, in some ways, than Bernie Sanders.”