A new NBC News and Telemundo survey shows most registered Latino voters disapprove of President Trump and favor Democratic control of Congress heading into the midterms.
Fox News reported that NBC News and Telemundo surveyed 800 registered Latino voters across the United States from Sept. 21 to 28, with a margin of error of 3.5%.
The results put Democrats back in a stronger position with that electorate on the question of who should run Congress, after Republicans posted gains with Latino voters in 2024.
Sixty-nine percent said they disapprove of Trump’s performance. Twenty-seven percent said they approve.
On the midterm power question, 59% said they want Democrats in control of Congress. Thirty-five percent preferred Republicans.
Nearly two-thirds of those voters, roughly 66%, said Trump’s deportation policies have gone too far.
Three in four, or 75%, said he has mishandled the economy and the cost of living.
Those two findings sit at the center of the poll’s political warning for Republicans. Border enforcement and household prices are the issues the survey tied most tightly to the drop in support.
Going into the 2024 elections, Democrats held only a 12-point lead among Latino voters on comparable party-preference measures. The new gap is wider.
Even so, the Republican share is not back at the lows of the last decade. Latino support for a GOP Congress stood at 21% in 2016 and 26% in 2018. Today’s 35% remains above both marks, even as Democrats reclaim a clear advantage in this snapshot.
President Trump answered the bad numbers the way he often does, by attacking the polls and pointing to turnout.
At a political rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday night, he argued that weak survey results fail to capture the effect of his own campaigning.
Trump told the crowd:
"These fake polls, they don't account for one thing. They don't account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning. They never thought this was good. They never thought this was going to happen,"
He cast the race as another round he expects to win with his base beside him.
Trump also said:
"With you at my side, we have always prevailed and prevailed by a lot and got record-setting votes and record-setting victory,"
And he framed the fight in sweeping terms:
"We've won every battle. We've defeated every hope. We've overcome every threat. And now we are on the cusp of beating the communists, socialist, radicalized lunatics and villains once and for all. We're going to put them down once and for all."
The Dayton remarks put his theory of the case in plain view: keep moving, keep drawing crowds, and treat the printed percentages as lagging indicators.
Separate projection figures reported alongside the poll still show a narrow national map.
Democrats were projected at 215 House seats and Republicans at 201, with 19 races treated as toss-ups.
In that math, Democrats need three more wins out of those 19 contests to lock down a majority. Republicans would need to carry at least 17 of them.
That is a steep climb for the GOP if the toss-up board breaks the other way. It is also a reminder that one demographic survey does not settle 435 districts.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., has been part of the public discussion on the right about how immigration enforcement lands with Hispanic voters as the midterms approach, including on Fox’s “America Reports.” The poll’s deportation finding is the number that makes that debate concrete.
The NBC News/Telemundo sample was built from phone interviews and online surveys sent by text message. It is a registered-voter pool, not a generic adult sample, and it is aimed squarely at Latino preference on Trump, deportations, the economy, and Congress.
It does not erase the 2024 shift toward Republicans. It does show that shift under pressure now, especially where voters say enforcement has overshot and prices remain painful.
Cost of living is not a boutique complaint. When 75% of a key voting bloc says the White House has mishandled prices, every candidate on the ballot feels it.
The deportation result cuts the other way from the coalition Trump built in 2024. Voters who wanted a secure border and lawful immigration can still reject tactics they view as excessive. The poll records that tension; it does not dissolve it.
For Republicans, the practical problem is arithmetic and message at once. They enter the cycle with more Latino support than they carried in 2016 or 2018, yet they trail badly on the Congress-control question in this survey and face a House map that forgives very few missed toss-ups.
For Democrats, the opening is obvious and perishable. A 24-point edge on Congress control among Latino registered voters is a serious asset if it holds through turnout season. It is not a substitute for winning the close seats that actually decide the gavel.
Trump’s answer is to keep campaigning and to deny the surveys the last word. The Dayton crowd heard that pitch without varnish.
Midterms punish parties that lose working households on prices. They also punish parties that cannot defend enforcement without losing voters they just won. This poll says both pressures are live ones, and the House math leaves little room for error.
