Latino voters helped put Trump back in the White House. What's their next move?

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP) — Chris Martinez feels like Donald Trump has made a fool of him.

The 28-year-old maintenance technician from Casa Grande, Arizona, voted for the Republican president expecting to get a thriving economy and no wars .

Instead, gas prices are so high that Martinez returned one of his vehicles to the lender, he shifted his food shopping to a discount grocer and he has watched as the United States has spent months in conflict with Iran.

“He’s doing nothing for us, to benefit us," Martinez said. "And it kind of sucks because I got duped and I feel like a dummy.”

As a group, Latinos shifted toward Trump two years ago, helping return him to the White House with a Republican-controlled Congress. Now, many like Martinez are souring on the president and his party, which could upend the balance of power in Washington in the Nov. 3 elections .

“I went right for a while, but I’m back to the middle," Martinez said.

The path to a U.S. House majority runs through heavily Latino districts in states such as Arizona, Colorado and Texas, where Democrats are counting on disaffected Trump supporters to swing back their way. It is unclear, however, whether Democrats have sealed the deal with voters who lack strong allegiance to either party.

Martinez, for one, is not sure if he is going to vote at all in the midterms.

Casa Grande, the town of 70,000 people where Martinez lives, sits at a crossroads between Phoenix and Tucson, an hour’s drive from each. There is a quaint downtown surrounded by master-planned developments offering affordable housing for people priced out of larger cities. Gated golf-course communities attract retirees.

Much of the town sits at the northern tip of Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, historically one of the most closely matched in the country. Republican Juan Ciscomani is seeking a third term. Two years ago, Ciscomani won by 2.5 percentage points and Trump won by less than 1 point.

This time, Ciscomani is subtly creating distance from Trump without directly criticizing the president or his policies. The congressman talks up his immigrant story — he was born in Mexico and moved to the U.S. as a kid — and frames himself as independent and bipartisan.

“I’m not a rubber stamp for anyone,” he says in one advertisement.

If Ciscomani retains his seat, it will be thanks to people like Chris Durant, 61, who has been voting for Republicans in recent elections and will probably do so again next month.

“We really don’t worry about gas and prices and what not,” Durant said as he and his wife loaded their pickup with groceries for his mother-in-law.

Ciscomani's Democratic opponent is JoAnna Mendoza. The former Marine emphasizes her own hardscrabble upbringing as the daughter of immigrant farmworkers who worked the fields close to Casa Grande.

“People trust you if they know that you came from the community and understand their way of life,” Mendoza said in an interview earlier this year.

Trump made broad gains among Hispanics during the 2024 campaign that returned him to the White House.

Back then, about 7 in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, slightly more than about two-thirds of voters overall, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Trump had a clear advantage among those voters.

Now, about 6 in 10 Hispanic voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from October. More than 7 in 10 disapprove of his performance on the economy.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in September showed that Hispanic voters are more concerned than voters overall about the cost of groceries and housing, and 70% blame Trump's policies more than factors outside his control for higher prices.

Their potential shift away from Republicans this year would be driven by anti-Trump sentiment, not a love of Democrats, said Mike Madrid, a political consultant who wrote “The Latino Century,” a book about Latino voters, and co-hosts “The Latino Vote” podcast.

Latinos are in the midst of a “dealignment,” rejecting strong associations with both parties because neither is speaking effectively to working class economic concerns, he said.

“The Latino electorate is moving from a racial-and-ethnic voting bloc to an economic, pocketbook, class-based voter,” Madrid said. “And the party that figures that out first is the party that will probably dominate for the next generation.”

Hispanics are about evenly split on their view of the Democratic Party, according to the October AP-NORC poll. Their views of the Republican Party are more negative, with 55% having an unfavorable view and 38% having a favorable one.

On a recent morning in Denver, Democratic state lawmaker Manny Rutinel stood before a crowd of union carpenters and rolled up his sleeve to show off a scar. The mark is from when he sold his blood more than 100 times to make ends meet.

“I’m the son of a single mom. She came to America to give me the American Dream. We worked hard for this country,” Rutinel told the boisterous crowd that fanned out to canvas for him in one of the country’s most-watched races.

Rutinel is challenging Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, which stretches from blue-collar Denver suburbs to energy-rich farm and ranchland in the northern stretch of the state. Latinos are the district’s single largest ethnic group, and both the incumbent and challenger are Hispanic. Evans won by less than 1 percentage point while Trump won by 2 points.

Rutinel has focused relentlessly on the economy since winning the nomination.

“The folks around the district feel they’ve been lied to and betrayed,” he said in an interview.

Evans, a 40-year-old former police lieutenant, has portrayed Rutinel as having a record as a left-wing activist and liberal lawmaker.

“Go ask any Hispanic in the district, do you think we should secure the border? Do you think we should get rid of the bad guys? Do you think we should help the good guys? They'll say yes,” Evans, whose grandfather was a Mexican immigrant, said in an interview.

Jose Montalvo, a 47-year-old trucker, voted for Evans even though he supported Democrat Kamala Harris for president in 2024. He likes to split his ticket between the parties but does not think he will do that this year after he needed to change insurers and cellphone providers to save money.

Montalvo is frustrated by Trump's handling of gas prices, saying “I blame him for the fuel side of things." That is a criticism he extends to all Republicans.

Maria del Carmen Rojas, a naturalized citizen who has lived in the United States for 36 years, said she is shocked that any Latinos could back Trump and a modern Republican Party that she thinks regularly denigrates immigrants.

She has four children who are U.S. citizens, including a son who served in the war in Afghanistan. She has spent her life working in factories and serving as a nanny to raise her children. Now she struggles to buy groceries.

“We Latinos contribute very much to this country, the taxes we pay, the service we provide,” she said.

A wooden sign that said “need prayer?” sat on a table with free Bibles along a busy suburban walking trail in Edinburg, Texas, on a hot October evening.

The town is part of the state's 15th Congressional District, which Trump carried by 18 percentage points but is now viewed as a top Election Day battleground.

Standing behind the table, Thomas Centrella, 42, said he has grown disillusioned with politics and finds himself fast-forwarding through campaign advertisements. Even though he tends to vote Republican, he might not in the future.

During Trump's first term, Centrella said, “I feel like he was going in a good direction, but I think now that it’s just gotten weird.” He doubts he would ever vote for a Democrat but said he might skip elections or turn independent in the future.

Maria Elsa Gonzalez, who is retired, said she will again support the district's Republican congresswoman, Monica de la Cruz, instead of Democrat Bobby Pulido , a Tejano music star. Speaking in Spanish, Gonzalez said Pulido “doesn’t have any preparation other than a pretty face and the fame of singing pretty.”

Priscilla Olivarez, 46, a public education teacher who was walking the trail is undecided in the midterms. She grew up as a Democrat and voted Republican in the last presidential election. Today, she is disappointed with an economy where costs seem to be growing faster than wages and she often digs into her own pocket to help pay for things in the classroom.

“I stand independent right now because I don’t agree with either side right now,” she said.

Riccardi reported from Denver and Gonzalez from Edinburg, Texas.