I have friends in California
who were born and raised in Mexico, speak Spanish as their first language, came to America legally, and went through the immigration and US citizenship process legally. They are not at all happy with illegal immigration and how people from other countries think they can sneak into America illegally. They are not alone.
If Hispanic Americans are in fact showing surging approval of Trump, he could be on his way to matching or exceeding the 40 percent won by George W. Bush in his 2004. If Trump does 12 percentage points better than his 2016 numbers with the growing Hispanic vote, it pretty much takes Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina off the table for Democrats, who would need to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House. At the same time, that 12-point shift would give Trump a clear shot at winning Colorado and Nevada, states where Hispanic voters make up well over 10 percent of the electorate and where Clinton won by 5 percentage points or less in 2016.
And if the Democratic path to the presidency looks hard without overwhelming Hispanic support, control of the Senate looks almost impossible. Any realistic scenario to gaining the necessary three seats—four if Trump retains the presidency—requires Democrats to defeat incumbents Cory Gardner in Colorado and Martha McSally in Arizona. Both states have higher than average Hispanic electorates. Gardner won his seat in 2014 by evenly splitting the Hispanic vote. McSally, who was just appointed to succeed John McCain, narrowly lost her 2018 race to Kyrsten Sinema by winning 30 percent of the Hispanic vote in her state. Any improvement among Hispanics for Republicans—or even just a lack of enthusiasm for turning out to vote against Trump—could easily return Gardner and McSally to the Senate and leave Democrats in the minority.
Trump’s Secret to Victory in 2020: Hispanic Voters
David S. Bernstein is a contributing political analyst at WGBH News in Boston. When President Donald Trump tweeted, on January 20, that he had reached 50 percent approval among Hispanic-Americans, most fair-minded observers reacted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief.