Latest news with #MikeMadrid
Politico
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Navigating a possible Prop 187 moment
Presented by IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID — For years, Mike Madrid has been moonlighting as the Cassandra of Latino voters, warning Democrats that the once-reliable voting bloc was slipping out of their grasp. Now, after the 2024 election largely confirmed his thesis, Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Donald Trump Lincoln Project, says he wants to help politicians from both parties deliver what Latinos actually want. His newly launched initiative, 'Working Class Latino Project,' promotes focusing on economics — and veering away from the immigration-centric focus of many Latino politicians in the last few decades. There's some irony in the timing of this debut, just as immigration has surged back into the spotlight. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are now daily occurrences in Los Angeles, potentially galvanizing a whole new generation of Latinos a la those who were politically mobilized after the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994. Madrid acknowledged that backlash to Trump's immigration enforcement could cause some Latinos to return to the Democratic Party. But, he insists, the cost of living concerns that drove Latinos' rightward shift aren't going away. 'Even if this is a possible Prop 187 moment, shame on us if we are not simultaneously creating an economic agenda,' Madrid said. 'Because one of the lessons that needs to be learned by my generation is if you don't have an economic agenda, it can all go away with one election.' Madrid commissioned a poll after the November election that found blaring warning signs for Democrats. More than three-quarters of respondents said that California state government policies made prices much higher or somewhat higher. Well over half of respondents disapproved of how the government was addressing the economy. But that doesn't automatically mean an upside for Republicans; respondents weren't convinced the GOP understood their needs. To Madrid, the findings signaled a jump ball for both parties to make a better dollars-and-cents appeal to Latinos. Plans for the initiative include polling, crafting policy development and hosting a series of economic summits across the state to identify key economic issues that Latinos want to see addressed. He plans to work with a bipartisan group of Latino legislators, as well as pollster Mindy Romero of USC. The venture is backed by Business Roundtable, with funding from corporate interests such as energy companies and developers. The money source will almost certainly raise eyebrows from Democrats, especially progressives and allies of organized labor, who may see the project as a stalking horse for conservative policies. Madrid says the project 'isn't going to be anti-labor at all,' and notes that he's willing to buck either party's orthodoxy. 'If tariffs harm the Latino middle class, which they do, I will be very vocal about that, along with other restrictive regulatory measures like CEQA [on] the left,' he said. Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, a moderate Democrat from the Antelope Valley who is involved in the initiative, said some progressives may be skeptical of Madrid's message. But he said his party needs to be 'realistic' about the economic dissatisfaction of the state's largest plurality ethnic group. 'The worry that older Latinos will continue to go to the right, I think that we need to pay attention to what they're telling us,' said Carrillo. 'Those hardworking older Latinos like myself — I came here when I was 15 years old from Guadalajara. I came here and I worked hard, and that's all the Latinos are telling me that in my district, that we are not paying attention' to issues like economic opportunity and upward mobility. Madrid has been working with Latino lawmakers from both parties to get the initiative off the ground — a touchy prospect given the partisan self-segregation in the Capitol between the longstanding Latino Legislative Caucus (composed only of Democrats) and the new Hispanic Legislative Caucus (for Republicans). He had advised against forming an official bipartisan caucus, precisely because hot-button issues like immigration could be too toxic for such a group. And other issues — economic ones — aren't going anywhere. 'Regardless of what's happening in LA, with the ICE raids and with the real need for immigration reform, people are still struggling to put gas in their cars,' said state Sen. Suzette Valladares, an Antelope Valley Republican also involved in the project. 'These economic issues are not going to go away, but are going to compound for working-class Latinos.' GOOD MORNING. Happy Thursday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook. You can text us at 916-562-0685 — save it as 'CA Playbook' in your contacts. Or drop us a line at dgardiner@ and bjones@ or on X — @DustinGardiner and @jonesblakej. WHERE'S GAVIN? Nothing official announced. STATE CAPITOL BUDGET BRUISER — Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget negotiations with the Legislature are going down to the wire due to a clash over housing policy and labor protections. Newsom has made approval of the entire budget contingent on whether lawmakers approve a proposal to slash environmental reviews for many housing projects in urban areas. As Lindsey Holden wrote for California Playbook PM, many rank-and-file Democrats and their powerful union allies are fuming over a new minimum wage requirement for residential construction workers. Debate at the Capitol on Wednesday devolved into should-be allies angrily comparing Newsom's plans to Jim Crow, slavery and immigration raids, our Eric He, Jeremy B. White and Rachel Bluth write. Meanwhile, district attorneys and law enforcement groups say the budget deal between Newsom and legislative leaders is a 'slap in the face' because it doesn't set aside more funding to help counties fully implement tough-on-crime ballot measure Proposition 36, which Newsom opposed. Read more, also from Lindsey. FANTASY FEUD — Major operators in the online fantasy sports-wagering arena are upping their Sacramento messaging blitz ahead of a highly anticipated opinion from state Attorney General Rob Bonta on whether the sites are legally operating in California. Chatter about Bonta's forthcoming opinion has ramped up as industry insiders speculate where he will land on the legality of placing wagers on fantasy team lineups, an increasingly lucrative online industry. The decision could have national implications for fantasy sports, given the size of California's market and the legal gray area in which the sites often operate. The speculation escalated Wednesday night, when KCRA reported that Bonta was 'expected to deem all online fantasy sports platforms illegal in the state,' citing multiple unnamed sources. Fantasy sports platform operators argue that their sites shouldn't be considered traditional sports wagering because selecting players to create a fictional roster of athletes is a game of skill, not chance. But tribal communities — which spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat a 2022 measure to legalize sports gambling — are fighting the fantasy industry's growth. They want Bonta to declare it illegal in all forms. Bonta began reviewing the legality of fantasy leagues in 2023, after receiving a request from a lawmaker, former state Sen. Scott Wilk, who warned fantasy betting was proliferating and is more akin to a game of chance. SILICON VALLEY MAHAN REBOUNDS — Progressive Democrats are having a very good week after Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, won the Democratic Party's primary for New York City mayor. But in the Bay Area, a different election Tuesday gave moderates cause to celebrate. In San Jose's special election for a City Council seat, moderate Anthony Tordillos trounced his labor-backed opponent by double digits. The outcome was a major coup for Mayor Matt Mahan, who has long battled with labor unions that loathe his brand of anti-establishment, centrist Democratic politics. Mahan endorsed Tordillos, chair of the Planning Commission, in the runoff against Gabby Chavez-Lopez, a progressive more closely aligned with unions. The outcome ensures that Mahan's moderate-aligned bloc will hold the majority on the City Council. Mahan, in an interview with Playbook, said he and Tordillos both represent a current of Silicon Valley leaders willing to challenge the status quo within liberal circles. 'People want elected leaders who are focused on results, not partisan or ideological battles,' Mahan said. Tordillos has backed some of Mahan's headline-grabbing policies, including his plan to tie city employees' pay raises to performance metrics. That said, he didn't support Mahan's much-debated plan to arrest homeless people who repeatedly refuse shelter. Nevertheless, Tuesday's outcome is a comeback of sorts for Mahan. In the first round of the council contest, Mahan's preferred candidate, Matthew Quevedo (his deputy chief of staff), narrowly finished in third place. Union leaders were quick to frame the outcome as a referendum on the mayor. But Mahan quickly moved to align himself with Tordillos in the runoff. Tordillos said the two, who share a background in tech, hit it off over their interest in using data to shape policy — as well as a sentiment that city government has been too dominated by ideology. 'Residents don't feel like the status quo is doing enough,' Tordillos said, citing the city's response to housing, homelessness and affordability problems. INFLUENCE WATCH OIL MONEY — Former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra received a $39,200 contribution from Chevron for his 2026 campaign for governor. It appears to be the oil company's first contribution to a candidate for governor since Jerry Brown in 2014, as Rob Pyers of Target Book observed. Becerra's contribution is likely to raise eyebrows among climate hawks in the Democratic Party. But his Chevron money pales in comparison with fellow gubernatorial hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa's pivot toward the oil industry. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the former LA mayor has accepted at least $176,000 in contributions from people with ties to the industry. CLIMATE AND ENERGY THIS WAY OR THE HIGHWAY — The ongoing brawl between labor and environmental groups over highway expansion is back on with a new wrinkle. Read last night's California Climate on why affordability — and not pollution — will be front and center when the two sides face off Thursday over $600 million in funding for six projects. TOP TALKERS STAYING PUT — Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Maria S. Salinas expressed concern in a Q&A with the LA Times for the city's small businesses amid the upheaval and ICE raids. Salinas said fears around recent enforcement actions in Los Angeles County — where immigrants account for 35 percent of the county's more than 10 million people — have caused both workers and consumers to stay home. 'When people are afraid to go out, they stay away from local stores and aren't going out to eat at their local restaurants. You see the emptiness in the local neighborhoods,' Salinas said. IN A CORNER — Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, in a post on X, encouraged the state to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Education after the agency concluded that California violated Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete in school sports according to their gender identity. In the post, Kiley called on the state to reverse the policy, restore medals and apologize to female athletes before it loses funding. Now, the state Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation have 10 days to change the policies or 'risk imminent enforcement action.' California officials said the state 'believes all students should have the opportunity to learn and play at school, and we have consistently applied existing law in support of students' rights to do so,' as NBC News reported. AROUND THE STATE — A new bill calls for creating a new regional agency for homelessness programming in Sacramento County and would effectively replace the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. (The Sacramento Bee) — A federal judge ruled that Los Angeles officials failed to follow a settlement agreement that would create more shelter for homeless people. (LAist) — Five former baseball players at the University of San Francisco filed a lawsuit claiming that the school failed to 'to adopt and enforce policies' prohibiting abuse allegedly by two ex-coaches. (San Francisco Chronicle) PLAYBOOKERS PEOPLE MOVES — Emily Cohen has been named CEO at United Contractors (UCON). She currently serves as UCON's executive VP and has been with the organization for over 15 years. — Jason Rzepka is joining the firm RALLY as senior director, effective mid-July. Rzepka, a veteran strategic comms pro, was most recently president and founder of WRIT LARGE. — Lisa M. Magorien has joined the law firm Seyfarth Shaw in Los Angeles (Century City), as a partner in its labor and employment practice. She was previously a partner at Lagasse Branch Bell & Kinkead, LLP. BIRTHDAYS — David Bocarsly at the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California … Robert Gonzalez at Teamsters Local 1932 … Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech … Mark McGrath at Creative Artists Agency … Lynwood City Councilmember Juan Muñoz-Guevara (favorite treat: tres leches cake or a Paloma cocktail) … OpenAI's Elizabeth Wilner … Merit's Trevor Cornwell … BELATED B-DAY WISHES — (was Wednesday): Dennis Cuevas-Romero at the California Primary Care Association … Hunter Bishop WANT A SHOUT-OUT FEATURED? — Send us a birthday, career move or another special occasion to include in POLITICO's California Playbook. You can now submit a shout-out using this Google form.
CNN
11-05-2025
- Business
- CNN
Analysis: Trump made historic gains with minority voters in 2024. They are already pulling back in 2025
Several of the key voter groups that provided President Donald Trump's most important electoral gains in November are recoiling from him as his term moves past the 100-day mark. But it remains unclear how much Democrats can benefit from these growing doubts. In 2024, Trump improved his performance among some big voting blocs that have historically favored Democrats, including Latinos, younger men, non-White voters without a college degree, and, to some extent, Black men. Trump's advances generated exuberant predictions from an array of right-leaning analysts that he had achieved a lasting realignment and cemented the GOP's hold on voters of all races without a college degree. But the flurry of polls 100 days into Trump's second term suggests that cement has not hardened as much as some allies anticipated. Across multiple surveys, Trump's overall job approval rating has fallen below his 2024 vote share with these key groups, and they are consistently giving him even lower marks for his handling of the economy, particularly inflation. 'The collapse that he's experiencing — I think that's the right word to phrase it — is broad-based and it's deep,' said Mike Madrid, an expert on Latino voters and a longtime Republican consultant who has become a leading Trump critic in the party. Few strategists in either party believe the cooling toward Trump means Democrats have erased their long-term problems with these voter groups, which have generally drifted toward the GOP since the end of Barack Obama's presidency. But the rapid erosion of Trump's standing with them does suggest that their movement toward him in 2024 was driven less by a durable rightward shift on cultural issues than by immediate discontent with their economic situation. And that means that rather than solidifying as part of the GOP coalition, many of these voters likely will remain up for grabs if Trump can't improve their finances any more than President Joe Biden did. 'What we don't see is an across-the-board realignment all up and down behind Trump's agenda,' said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, which recently completed a large-scale survey of Americans' attitudes on cultural issues. Whether measured by Election Day surveys or precinct-level results, Trump's improvement among voter groups that had not traditionally supported the GOP was arguably the biggest factor in his return to the White House. Both the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN and the AP VoteCast survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found that Trump's vote among White people was virtually identical from 2020 to 2024 and improved just modestly among voters older than 30. But all data sources agreed that Trump made significant gains among groups that had been pillars of what was once called the 'Obama coalition' and what I termed in 2008 'the coalition of the ascendant.' The exit polls and VoteCast studies, for instance, both found that Trump in 2024 won around 45% of voters younger than 30, up from 36% in 2020. Both showed he gained much more among young men than among young women. Likewise, both sources showed Trump crossing 40% support among Latinos, a modern high for the GOP, up from about one-third in 2020. The VoteCast study also found Trump doubling his vote among Black men to about 1 in 4. (The exit poll did not find meaningful improvement for him with them.) The most attention after the election focused on Trump's improvement among minority voters without a four-year college degree. The exit polls and AP VoteCast agreed that Trump carried almost exactly one-third of them, a big improvement over the roughly one-fourth of their votes he carried in 2020. Since Trump's first term, a growing number of center-right analysts in both parties have argued that Democrats were alienating working-class non-White voters by emphasizing culturally liberal and 'woke' positions on issues such as transgender rights or the use of 'Latinx' to describe Latinos. Many of these voices took Trump's 2024 gains as proof that non-White voters without a college degree were now realigning away from Democrats toward the GOP, primarily around cultural issues, just as non-college-educated White voters did during the 1960s and 1970s. 'The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman,' Ruy Teixeira, a longtime Democratic analyst who has become a leading critic of the party, wrote immediately after the election. 'This election has made this problem manifest in the starkest possible terms, as the Democratic coalition shattered into pieces.' Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, author of 'Party of the People,' a book that perceptively analyzes the GOP's growing strength among working-class minorities, summarized the results even more succinctly: 'No word for it but … realignment,' he wrote on social media few weeks after the vote. Just over 100 days into Trump's second term, the picture, at the least, looks much more fluid. The swarm of national polls marking Trump's 100 days shows his job approval rating among young people, Latinos and Black Americans falling below — often well below — his 2024 vote shares. His ratings on the economy with those groups are even weaker. And while Trump still receives decent grades from Hispanic and young people for his handling of the border, ratings of his overall approach to immigration have consistently fallen into negative territory with them as well. Trump's position has equally eroded among the group whose shift toward him last year attracted the most attention: the large number of minority Americans without a four-year college degree. His approval rating among those blue-collar racial minorities stands at just 29% in the latest CNN/SRSS poll, according to results provided by the CNN polling unit. (The latest New York Times/Siena, Pew Research Center and Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos surveys produced nearly identical results among that group.) Just 27% of non-college-educated people of color approved of Trump's economic performance in the CNN survey, and two-thirds of them thought he was 'going too far' in his deportation agenda. Nearly 3 in 4 of them in the Washington Post survey said Trump does not respect the rule of law, and just 1 in 6 in the New York Times/Siena poll agreed with his assertion that he should be allowed to send US citizens to a prison in El Salvador. Coming so soon in 2025, this broad dissatisfaction is casting a retrospective shadow over what happened in 2024. Madrid says the recoil from Trump, particularly among Latinos, makes clear that the movement toward him in 2024 was based mostly on economic factors rather than affinity for his cultural and racial views. 'This is just another brick in the wall of the argument that this (Latino voter) is an economic voter,' Madrid said. Jones similarly thinks the quick distancing from Trump strengthens the argument that his 2024 gains among minority and younger voters were driven more by the economy than by a cultural realignment. In PRRI's recent national survey, Hispanic, Black and Gen Z adults were all much less likely than Trump's core constituency of White voters without a four-year college degree to agree with foundational MAGA beliefs, such as that Whites and Christians are the real victims of discrimination or that 'immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.' 'There's a real danger that Trump is overreaching on the cultural issues,' Jones said. Republican former Rep. Carlos Curbelo likewise believes Trump may be pushing his Latino supporters too far with the sweep of his deportation agenda, especially while they remain stressed about the economy. 'Democrats were wrong to believe that Hispanic voters would never prioritize border security and the deportation of the undocumented,' Curbelo wrote in an email. '(But) the current Administration is wrong if they think Hispanic voters will perform like MAGA base voters on immigration enforcement matters.' Ray Serrano, national director of research and policy at LULAC, a Hispanic advocacy organization, sees Trump's decline in terms that are even more absolute. 'If there was a flirtation with possibly moving to the Trump side, to the Republican side, it's moving away now,' Serrano said during a recent conference call that Latino advocacy groups held to release a national survey from a bipartisan polling team about Trump's first 100 days. The disappointed response to Trump's return, he argued, could signal 'the rise and immediate fall of the Trump Latino Democrat.' It may be as premature, though, to dismiss Trump's inroads among these traditionally Democratic groups as it was to declare them proof of a durable realignment. All the 100-days surveys provide evidence that many of these voters, though disappointed in Trump's first days, have not shut the door on him. Republican pollster Daron Shaw, for instance, said the survey conducted for Latino advocacy groups by a bipartisan polling team found that both Trump's job approval and support for some of his most controversial initiatives, such as deporting people without hearings or ending diversity initiatives, remained much stronger among men younger than 40 than any other group of Latinos. And, as Jones pointed out, some of Trump's conservative cultural views continue to resonate with minority voters, especially men. Big majorities of Latino men and women and Black men, for instance, agreed in the PRRI poll that transgender people should be required to use the bathroom of their gender at birth; a substantial minority of each group also agreed with the conservative perspective that society is better off when men and women accept traditional gender roles. Even on the economy, the polls show some room for Trump, with many of his new voters saying it is too soon to render a verdict on his impact. The latest CNN poll was typical: Half of minority adults without college degrees said Trump has done nothing to address the nation's problems, compared with only about 1 in 5 who said his agenda was already helping. But slightly more than another 1 in 4 of them said his agenda could generate benefits in time. That suggests he could recover among blue-collar non-White voters if they see progress on their biggest concerns, principally inflation. John Della Volpe, who directs the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics' youth poll, agreed that Trump's attraction for younger voters has been frayed, not severed. 'A lot of the newer Trump voters could say they disapprove of him, and they are unsure of his policies, but they are telling me they are giving him some time,' said Della Volpe, who also advised a super PAC in 2024 that tried to rally young voters for Vice President Kamala Harris. Della Volpe says younger voters' uncertainty about Trump hasn't erased their doubts about Democrats. Though the Harvard survey has recorded sharp declines in support for Trump's economic management just since January, Della Volpe said, 'it doesn't mean Democrats at this stage are a viable alternative.' Madrid likewise thinks it would be a mistake for Democrats to assume the discontent with Trump has solved their own problems with Latinos and other blue-collar minority voters. He correctly notes that Democrats' performance among Latinos rebounded in the 2018 midterm elections relative to 2016, only to resume their decline in the 2020 presidential election and continue downward in 2024. The party could likewise run better among Latinos in 2026 than in 2024, Madrid says, solely because the less frequent, often younger, Latino voters most drawn to Trump tend not to turn out as much in midterm elections. But unless Democrats develop a more convincing economic message, he says, those less-reliable voters could easily prefer the GOP again when they return in larger numbers in 2028. 'The lesson that Democrats failed to learn in 2018 could come back and haunt them in this election cycle: Winning just by being against something does not cement or build the coalition,' Madrid said. Trump so far has clearly failed to consolidate, much less extend, the beachhead he established last year with younger and non-White voters. His sweeping tariffs, by raising their daily costs, seem likely to weaken his position with them. But in the battle for these voters' long-term allegiance, Democrats would be dangerously complacent to conclude the tide has already turned. Young people and blue-collar minorities, especially the men in each group, now look less like reliable voters for either party than a volatile swing constituency that could tip future presidential contests based on which side they believe can best deliver for their bottom line.
CNN
11-05-2025
- Business
- CNN
Analysis: Trump made historic gains with minority voters in 2024. They are already pulling back in 2025
Several of the key voter groups that provided President Donald Trump's most important electoral gains in November are recoiling from him as his term moves past the 100-day mark. But it remains unclear how much Democrats can benefit from these growing doubts. In 2024, Trump improved his performance among some big voting blocs that have historically favored Democrats, including Latinos, younger men, non-White voters without a college degree, and, to some extent, Black men. Trump's advances generated exuberant predictions from an array of right-leaning analysts that he had achieved a lasting realignment and cemented the GOP's hold on voters of all races without a college degree. But the flurry of polls 100 days into Trump's second term suggests that cement has not hardened as much as some allies anticipated. Across multiple surveys, Trump's overall job approval rating has fallen below his 2024 vote share with these key groups, and they are consistently giving him even lower marks for his handling of the economy, particularly inflation. 'The collapse that he's experiencing — I think that's the right word to phrase it — is broad-based and it's deep,' said Mike Madrid, an expert on Latino voters and a longtime Republican consultant who has become a leading Trump critic in the party. Few strategists in either party believe the cooling toward Trump means Democrats have erased their long-term problems with these voter groups, which have generally drifted toward the GOP since the end of Barack Obama's presidency. But the rapid erosion of Trump's standing with them does suggest that their movement toward him in 2024 was driven less by a durable rightward shift on cultural issues than by immediate discontent with their economic situation. And that means that rather than solidifying as part of the GOP coalition, many of these voters likely will remain up for grabs if Trump can't improve their finances any more than President Joe Biden did. 'What we don't see is an across-the-board realignment all up and down behind Trump's agenda,' said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, which recently completed a large-scale survey of Americans' attitudes on cultural issues. Whether measured by Election Day surveys or precinct-level results, Trump's improvement among voter groups that had not traditionally supported the GOP was arguably the biggest factor in his return to the White House. Both the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN and the AP VoteCast survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found that Trump's vote among White people was virtually identical from 2020 to 2024 and improved just modestly among voters older than 30. But all data sources agreed that Trump made significant gains among groups that had been pillars of what was once called the 'Obama coalition' and what I termed in 2008 'the coalition of the ascendant.' The exit polls and VoteCast studies, for instance, both found that Trump in 2024 won around 45% of voters younger than 30, up from 36% in 2020. Both showed he gained much more among young men than among young women. Likewise, both sources showed Trump crossing 40% support among Latinos, a modern high for the GOP, up from about one-third in 2020. The VoteCast study also found Trump doubling his vote among Black men to about 1 in 4. (The exit poll did not find meaningful improvement for him with them.) The most attention after the election focused on Trump's improvement among minority voters without a four-year college degree. The exit polls and AP VoteCast agreed that Trump carried almost exactly one-third of them, a big improvement over the roughly one-fourth of their votes he carried in 2020. Since Trump's first term, a growing number of center-right analysts in both parties have argued that Democrats were alienating working-class non-White voters by emphasizing culturally liberal and 'woke' positions on issues such as transgender rights or the use of 'Latinx' to describe Latinos. Many of these voices took Trump's 2024 gains as proof that non-White voters without a college degree were now realigning away from Democrats toward the GOP, primarily around cultural issues, just as non-college-educated White voters did during the 1960s and 1970s. 'The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman,' Ruy Teixeira, a longtime Democratic analyst who has become a leading critic of the party, wrote immediately after the election. 'This election has made this problem manifest in the starkest possible terms, as the Democratic coalition shattered into pieces.' Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, author of 'Party of the People,' a book that perceptively analyzes the GOP's growing strength among working-class minorities, summarized the results even more succinctly: 'No word for it but … realignment,' he wrote on social media few weeks after the vote. Just over 100 days into Trump's second term, the picture, at the least, looks much more fluid. The swarm of national polls marking Trump's 100 days shows his job approval rating among young people, Latinos and Black Americans falling below — often well below — his 2024 vote shares. His ratings on the economy with those groups are even weaker. And while Trump still receives decent grades from Hispanic and young people for his handling of the border, ratings of his overall approach to immigration have consistently fallen into negative territory with them as well. Trump's position has equally eroded among the group whose shift toward him last year attracted the most attention: the large number of minority Americans without a four-year college degree. His approval rating among those blue-collar racial minorities stands at just 29% in the latest CNN/SRSS poll, according to results provided by the CNN polling unit. (The latest New York Times/Siena, Pew Research Center and Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos surveys produced nearly identical results among that group.) Just 27% of non-college-educated people of color approved of Trump's economic performance in the CNN survey, and two-thirds of them thought he was 'going too far' in his deportation agenda. Nearly 3 in 4 of them in the Washington Post survey said Trump does not respect the rule of law, and just 1 in 6 in the New York Times/Siena poll agreed with his assertion that he should be allowed to send US citizens to a prison in El Salvador. Coming so soon in 2025, this broad dissatisfaction is casting a retrospective shadow over what happened in 2024. Madrid says the recoil from Trump, particularly among Latinos, makes clear that the movement toward him in 2024 was based mostly on economic factors rather than affinity for his cultural and racial views. 'This is just another brick in the wall of the argument that this (Latino voter) is an economic voter,' Madrid said. Jones similarly thinks the quick distancing from Trump strengthens the argument that his 2024 gains among minority and younger voters were driven more by the economy than by a cultural realignment. In PRRI's recent national survey, Hispanic, Black and Gen Z adults were all much less likely than Trump's core constituency of White voters without a four-year college degree to agree with foundational MAGA beliefs, such as that Whites and Christians are the real victims of discrimination or that 'immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.' 'There's a real danger that Trump is overreaching on the cultural issues,' Jones said. Republican former Rep. Carlos Curbelo likewise believes Trump may be pushing his Latino supporters too far with the sweep of his deportation agenda, especially while they remain stressed about the economy. 'Democrats were wrong to believe that Hispanic voters would never prioritize border security and the deportation of the undocumented,' Curbelo wrote in an email. '(But) the current Administration is wrong if they think Hispanic voters will perform like MAGA base voters on immigration enforcement matters.' Ray Serrano, national director of research and policy at LULAC, a Hispanic advocacy organization, sees Trump's decline in terms that are even more absolute. 'If there was a flirtation with possibly moving to the Trump side, to the Republican side, it's moving away now,' Serrano said during a recent conference call that Latino advocacy groups held to release a national survey from a bipartisan polling team about Trump's first 100 days. The disappointed response to Trump's return, he argued, could signal 'the rise and immediate fall of the Trump Latino Democrat.' It may be as premature, though, to dismiss Trump's inroads among these traditionally Democratic groups as it was to declare them proof of a durable realignment. All the 100-days surveys provide evidence that many of these voters, though disappointed in Trump's first days, have not shut the door on him. Republican pollster Daron Shaw, for instance, said the survey conducted for Latino advocacy groups by a bipartisan polling team found that both Trump's job approval and support for some of his most controversial initiatives, such as deporting people without hearings or ending diversity initiatives, remained much stronger among men younger than 40 than any other group of Latinos. And, as Jones pointed out, some of Trump's conservative cultural views continue to resonate with minority voters, especially men. Big majorities of Latino men and women and Black men, for instance, agreed in the PRRI poll that transgender people should be required to use the bathroom of their gender at birth; a substantial minority of each group also agreed with the conservative perspective that society is better off when men and women accept traditional gender roles. Even on the economy, the polls show some room for Trump, with many of his new voters saying it is too soon to render a verdict on his impact. The latest CNN poll was typical: Half of minority adults without college degrees said Trump has done nothing to address the nation's problems, compared with only about 1 in 5 who said his agenda was already helping. But slightly more than another 1 in 4 of them said his agenda could generate benefits in time. That suggests he could recover among blue-collar non-White voters if they see progress on their biggest concerns, principally inflation. John Della Volpe, who directs the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics' youth poll, agreed that Trump's attraction for younger voters has been frayed, not severed. 'A lot of the newer Trump voters could say they disapprove of him, and they are unsure of his policies, but they are telling me they are giving him some time,' said Della Volpe, who also advised a super PAC in 2024 that tried to rally young voters for Vice President Kamala Harris. Della Volpe says younger voters' uncertainty about Trump hasn't erased their doubts about Democrats. Though the Harvard survey has recorded sharp declines in support for Trump's economic management just since January, Della Volpe said, 'it doesn't mean Democrats at this stage are a viable alternative.' Madrid likewise thinks it would be a mistake for Democrats to assume the discontent with Trump has solved their own problems with Latinos and other blue-collar minority voters. He correctly notes that Democrats' performance among Latinos rebounded in the 2018 midterm elections relative to 2016, only to resume their decline in the 2020 presidential election and continue downward in 2024. The party could likewise run better among Latinos in 2026 than in 2024, Madrid says, solely because the less frequent, often younger, Latino voters most drawn to Trump tend not to turn out as much in midterm elections. But unless Democrats develop a more convincing economic message, he says, those less-reliable voters could easily prefer the GOP again when they return in larger numbers in 2028. 'The lesson that Democrats failed to learn in 2018 could come back and haunt them in this election cycle: Winning just by being against something does not cement or build the coalition,' Madrid said. Trump so far has clearly failed to consolidate, much less extend, the beachhead he established last year with younger and non-White voters. His sweeping tariffs, by raising their daily costs, seem likely to weaken his position with them. But in the battle for these voters' long-term allegiance, Democrats would be dangerously complacent to conclude the tide has already turned. Young people and blue-collar minorities, especially the men in each group, now look less like reliable voters for either party than a volatile swing constituency that could tip future presidential contests based on which side they believe can best deliver for their bottom line.
