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As President Donald Trump wraps up the initial year of his second term, recent findings from the Pew Research Center reveal growing dissatisfaction among Hispanic adults regarding his administration’s handling of pivotal issues like the economy and immigration. These topics were crucial for voters in the previous election.
In surveys conducted with over 5,000 Hispanic adults across the U.S. during September and October, results indicate that, a year after Trump made inroads into the Democrats’ traditional Latino voter base, many Hispanics are feeling increasingly uneasy about their status in the nation. There is also heightened concern about the potential deportation of themselves or someone they know compared to earlier in the year.
Declining approval of Trump
Approximately two-thirds of Hispanic adults express disapproval of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, with 61% believing his economic strategies have exacerbated conditions.
Although there was a shift among Hispanic voters toward Trump in the 2024 election, the majority still favored Democrat Kamala Harris. Data from AP VoteCast shows that 43% of Hispanic voters nationwide supported Trump, a rise from the 35% who did so in the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Among Hispanics who voted for Trump in 2024, a significant 81% approve of his performance, although this is a decrease from the 93% approval at the beginning of his second term. Conversely, nearly all Hispanic voters who supported Harris disapprove of Trump’s performance.
The shift in opinion underscores how worried and dissatisfied many Hispanic adults feel. Although many Hispanic voters were motivated by economic concerns in last year’s election, recent polls indicate that Hispanic adults continue to feel higher financial stress than Americans overall.
Hispanic voters made up 10% of the electorate in 2024, according to AP VoteCast, and the number of eligible Hispanic voters has been growing rapidly in recent decades.
Rising anxiety about Hispanics’ place in the U.S.
About two-thirds of Hispanic adults say the situation for Hispanics in the U.S. is worse than it was a year ago. That’s higher than in 2019, during Trump’s first term, when 39% thought U.S. Hispanics’ situation had worsened over the past year.
Similarly, about 8 in 10 Hispanic adults say Trump’s policies harm more than help them. These views are more negative than in 2019, when about 7 in 10 said the first Trump administration’s policies were more harmful to Hispanics than helpful.
The Hispanics who are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party overwhelmingly think U.S. Hispanics are worse off, as a group, than they were a year ago, but so do 43% of Hispanic Republicans and Republican-leaners.
Broad worries about immigration enforcement
Over the past few months, Hispanic communities have been a target of the president’s hard-line immigration tactics.
Today, 44% of Latinos adults are immigrants, numbering 21.1 million, according to a Pew analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates from the 2024 American Community Survey.
Amid the heightened enforcement, 52% of Hispanic adults say they worry “a lot” or “some” that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported. This is up from 42% in March.
The tough immigration environment has also affected the way some Hispanic adults live their everyday lives, with 19% saying they have recently changed their daily activities because they think they’ll be asked to prove their legal status, and 11% saying they carry documents proving their citizenship or immigration status more often than they normally would.
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The Pew Research Center survey of 8,046 U.S. adults, including 4,923 Hispanics, was conducted Oct. 6-16 using samples drawn from the probability-based American Trends Panel and SSRS Opinion Panel. A second survey of 3,445 U.S. adults, including 629 Hispanics, was conducted Sept. 22 to 28, 2025 using samples drawn from the probability-based American Trends Panel.