Hispanic Voters in Texas Are Turning on Trump Before Midterms

What happened

Two weeks out from the midterm elections, the Rio Grande Valley is giving Republicans a warning they didn't want to hear. Polling taken since late summer shows a majority of Hispanic voters in Texas now disapprove of President Trump — and Hispanic voters are favoring Democrats over Republicans by a significant margin.

That's a sharp reversal. In 2024, Trump won around 55% of Hispanic votes in Texas, a record for a Republican presidential candidate. The shift matters most in places like Texas's 15th congressional district. It was redrawn after the 2020 census, flipped to a Republican in 2022, then redrawn again in 2025 into what should have been a notional 18-point GOP majority. Current polling shows a Democratic lead of five to six points instead.

The Democratic challenger is Bobby Pulido, a Tejano singer with two Latin Grammys who is already a household name across the valley. He has deliberately distanced himself from the national Democratic brand and is running almost entirely on the economy. "This isn't New York, this isn't LA," he told the BBC. "When you lead with issues like social justice, climate change and other topics, that's not what people want to hear first. They want to hear about the economy."

The anger on the ground isn't about the border being secured — many residents supported that. It's about how deportations are being carried out. Texas accounted for roughly one-third of all ICE arrests nationwide in July, a larger share than any other state, according to government figures obtained by the Deportation Data Project. At the tiny La Lomita Catholic Chapel, about 200 yards from the Rio Grande, Father Roy Snipes — the "Cowboy Priest" who has led the congregation for nearly 50 years — told worshippers: "There's no good excuse to detain, incarcerate and deport poor, good folks who are our neighbours."

Why it matters

The 15th has become the clearest test of whether electoral maps can guarantee political outcomes. Trump's push to have states like Texas redraw congressional lines early — before the once-a-decade census — was built on the belief that Hispanic voters were shifting permanently toward the GOP. If that bet was wrong in the very district it was designed to lock down, the strategy backfires publicly.

The candidate running in the 15th knows exactly what voters care about. At an avocado festival in the valley, a couple named Dave Baldwin and Veronica Salazar started talking about rising prices the moment they were asked about the elections. Asked who they blame for spiking costs, the answer came fast: "The president." The [economy and cost of living keep dominating voter concerns](/article/cost-of-living-strain-us-workers-midterm-elections), and polls consistently rank it the top priority for most voters.

The people changing their minds aren't Democrats in disguise. Mario Guerrero, a Mexican-American businessman who leads the South Texas Builders Association, voted for Trump three times in a row. He says he'll vote Democrat in November. "We thought that we were in the right by voting for Trump, and that he was going to do what was best in order to fix the crisis on the border," he said. "We were really not told the extreme that they were willing to go to make a point."

Republican consultant Mike Madrid, an expert on Hispanic voters, put the stakes in blunt terms: "Latinos are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to identify as independents rather than Republicans or Democrats." Neither party owns this vote. It has to be earned, district by district.

What it means for the US

If polling holds — and the BBC itself cautions there is no guarantee — a modest Hispanic swing back to Democrats could reshape far more than one House seat in Texas. It could put a US Senate seat in play, something Democrats haven't won in the state in more than 30 years. A Texas Senate seat changing hands would scramble the 2026 map in a way few analysts predicted a year ago.

There's an economic undercurrent that reaches well beyond Texas. Guerrero describes a contractor in the valley who used to have 35 workers show up every day and is now lucky to get four to six. When worksites empty out across Texas, the state's construction and agriculture output takes a hit — and so do the prices Americans pay for food and housing. Immigration enforcement that removes productive, law-abiding workers has a cost measured in grocery bills and building delays. Even McAllen's Republican mayor, Javier Villalobos, draws that line: he's fine with deporting "criminals, violent people," but deporting productive people "is where the problem is."

The deeper national lesson is about the Latino vote itself — the largest ethnic demographic voting group in the country. Both parties have spent years declaring it permanently realigned one way or the other. Madrid's finding says the opposite: these voters are independents first, and they will keep punishing whoever disappoints them. Republicans in neighboring Texas's 28th district already sound it. Tano Tijerina, the GOP candidate there, credits Trump with "breaking through barriers" while admitting "the national political headwinds are real."

And for the broader [midterm picture](/article/us-midterm-elections-2026-explained), the message is consistent with every other battleground: it's the economy. [Trump's own midterm posture](/article/trump-boasts-unprecedented-power-before-midterms) assumes his base turns out. But student GOP volunteer Alexis Uscanga, knocking on doors in the 15th, was realistic about what his side is up against: "The midterms are just purely a game of turnout. It's about trying to get our people mostly to show up."

What happens next

The election is November 3 — days away, with millions of Americans already voting early. The next data points that matter are the final polls of the 15th district and turnout numbers from the Rio Grande Valley's border counties. If early-vote returns show Hispanic precincts voting at 2024 levels while favoring Democrats by the margins polls suggest, Republicans' redistricting gamble will have produced the opposite of its intended effect.

Watch the Senate race too. Pollsters spent years treating Texas as a Republican firewall. A competitive Senate campaign there in the final stretch would be the strongest signal that the 2024 Hispanic realignment was a rental, not a purchase — and that the 2026 map is bigger than either party planned for.