The Poll that Should Freak Out Every Republican Running Office

Trump's support among Latinos starts to crumble and that's bad news for the GOP in '26 and beyond

Donald Trump is obsessed with his poll numbers. Not the real numbers — that truth would be too brutal for his brittle ego — but a series of imagined ones. In an interview with CNBC this week, Trump showed just how detached he is from the reality of his polls. Despite being pressed by anchor Joe Kernen, an ally, Trump continued to assert that his poll numbers were the “best he ever had” (not true) and that there were polls showing his approval rating at “71%” (utterly ridiculous). If your 79-year-old relative said things this delusional, you’d call a family meeting.

The truth is that Trump’s poll numbers are historically bad. The only president with a worse approval rating at this point in their term is… Donald Trump in 2017. His numbers have fallen significantly since the beginning of his term.

These numbers should be concerning for Republicans running for reelection next year. Presidential approval is historically correlated with their party’s success in the midterms. However, a new poll from Equis Research on Latino voters should scare the living daylights out of Republicans — including, and especially, Donald Trump — because it portends real problems in the midterms.

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A Crucial Voting Bloc

For Democrats, one of the most shocking and confounding aspects of the Trump era is his significant gains with Latinos over the last eight years. According to Catalist, a Democratic data firm, Trump gained 16 points with Latinos from 2016 to 2024 — a massive shift that fueled his victory and Republican claims of a permanent electoral majority.

Much of the panic from Democratic strategists after the election centered on this shift. Latinos are the fastest-growing population in America. If Republicans continue to make gains with Latinos while holding their overwhelming margins with working-class white voters, Democrats could be locked out of power. It’s simple math.

In the near term, Republicans need Trump-level Latino support to hold onto the House.

However, according to the Equis Research poll, Latino voters are already starting to sour on Trump and the GOP, just seven months into his term.