Mike Madrid, former political director for the California Republican Party and expert on Latino voting trends, is amplifying a new poll by Equis Research which shows that among Latinos, 48% say they’ll vote Democrat while 27% will vote Republican, with 16% undecided.
Note: Madrid began to criticize the Republican Party during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and in 2019 co-founded the Lincoln Project, which raised almost $100 million to campaign against Trump’s failed 2020 re-election bid.
Madrid added to the poll results: “Latino voters back to 2016 Republican baseline,” and asserted the Latino swing toward the GOP, which helped re-elect Trump in 2024, represented the “shortest political honeymoon ever.”
Latino voters back to 2016 Republican baseline https://t.co/TcVfOlMUgv
— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) August 5, 2025
Madrid, author of the book The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy, is replying to comments on X that question his conclusion, including: “That’s also a fairly large undecided number there Mike.”
“True,” Madrid replied, “But it’s a good baseline this early out.”
[Note: The promo copy for Madrid’s The Latino Century, published in 2024, claims “Republicans, not because of their best efforts but rather despite them, are just beginning to see a movement of Latinos toward the GOP. Democrats, for the moment, still win a commanding share of the Latino vote, but that share is dwindling fast.” Yet promoting this new poll, Madrid appears to contend that the “dwindling” has slowed.]
The Equis research itself concludes that “while Democrats gained trust on economic issues following the inauguration, there is a rising cynicism toward both major parties among swing Latino voters.”
When another commenter replied that “Polling absolutely whiffed with Hispanic voters in 2020, 2022, and 2024. And that’s an absurd number of undecideds,” Madrid replied, “The only polling that got it wrong in those years was one partisan Democratic firm (happened to be working for Biden). Everyone else got it right.”
But if the 16% undecideds Madrid cites rankles his audience, Equis cites an even larger number of undecideds among Latino voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and then Trump in 2024 — the so-called Biden defectors — writing that among this group, “31% say they’ll vote for a Democrat, 34% say a Republican, and 30% are undecided.” (NOTE: 100% of these voters chose Trump in 2024.)
Despite the rightward shift in the last election, on most issues the Latino poll results read like the platform of most Democratic Congress members. Equis writes: “Despite perceptions of out-of-control [government] spending, Latinos strongly oppose cuts to social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (80% oppose), and food assistance programs like SNAP (76% oppose) as a way to offset costs, and a narrower majority (56%) oppose cuts to military and defense spending. Latinos also generally oppose cuts to research grants for colleges and universities (67% oppose).”
The money to run those programs, Latinos in the poll indicate, can be found elsewhere, as among Latinos there is “overwhelming support for increasing taxes on billionaires (81% support), big corporations (78% support), and the ultra wealthy (78% support).” This conviction is shared by Latino Republicans as well as Latino Democrats.
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