If Dems Win, Incribe This Chart on Trump-MAGA’s Political Gravestone

With a bit of luck, this midterm election could finally break what we might call the Myth of Multiracial MAGA. That pervasive notion held that Trump’s 2024 gains with Latinos heralded the birth of a new multiethnic working-class coalition anchored around right-wing populist ideas. In the ultimate humiliation for liberals, that included immigration restrictionism.

A fresh blow to this notion came this week with an NBC poll finding Trump’s approval with Latinos sinking to 27 percent, and Democrats leading among them in the generic matchup by 59–35. But such polls capture only half the story. The other factor to consider? Latino turnout.

A new analysis by the Democratic data firm TargetSmart—which we obtained before its release—demonstrates something striking: As of right now, the Latino share of the early vote is dramatically outpacing where it was at the equivalent moment in both 2022 and 2024.

Here’s the truly wild finding: The raw number of early Latino votes is outpacing the raw total of them at the same point in 2024. That’s a surprise, because 2024 was a presidential year, when voter turnout is traditionally much higher, especially among nonwhites. Yet more Latinos have voted as of now—in this midterm—than at this point in the last presidential cycle.

TargetSmart’s analysis looked at the 229 counties across the country that are currently reporting early votes, mostly concentrated in states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida.

Here’s the first key finding on vote share:

As you can see, as of October 8, Latinos comprise nearly 8 percent of the early vote in those 229 counties, substantially higher than the percentages in 2022 and 2024, per TargetSmart’s analysis. Those gains amount to big numbers, as the second key finding on raw vote totals shows:

That graphic is remarkable. As of October 8, according to the analysis, nearly 112,000 Latinos have voted, versus the approximately 106,000 who cast votes by the same time in the presidential year of 2024.

“While it’s still early, it’s incredibly unusual to see any group outperform presidential turnout at this point in the cycle,” Tom Bonier, a senior adviser at TargetSmart, told me. “Latino turnout tends to drop more in midterms. So seeing this early surge suggests we’ll potentially see historic levels of Latino engagement.”

What’s driving all this? The economy is likely the primary driver: The NBC poll found 74 percent of Latinos nationally disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. Latinos prefer Democrats to Republicans on the issue by 21 points—a huge turnaround from 2024, when Trump narrowly led Kamala Harris among Latinos on it.

But immigration also looms large. NBC finds 69 percent of Latinos disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration and 58 percent disapprove on border security. Even the Republican pollster who helps conduct NBC’s poll says the issue is a big factor driving Latinos to Democrats.

Indeed, TargetSmart’s analysis also finds that many counties with the largest spikes in Latino turnout are also ones subjected to high-profile ICE activity. “Communities that have been directly impacted by ICE actions are generally seeing the largest increases in turnout,” Bonier said.

Here is a big caveat: We’re at the outset of early voting, so we’ll know more when early-vote tallies arrive from states like Texas, California, New York, and Pennsylvania, which will shed light on the Texas Senate races and many House races concentrated in those states.

Nick Ahamed, managing director of Equis Research, also cautions against reading too much into the early vote because we can’t be certain how it’ll break down. But Equis research finds that Latinos comprise more than 10 percent of eligible voters in 20 competitive House districts and more than 20 percent in a dozen of those districts. Given the NBC poll showing Democrats with a 24-point lead among them, Latinos could heavily influence the outcome.

“If Democrats regain Latino support at levels we’re seeing in the polling, we expect Democrats to win in many of those 20 districts,” Ahamed told me. He noted that Equis research also shows Trump’s handling of costs and immigration are key drivers of Latino interest in voting.

MAGA as a movement probably has plenty of staying power even if the midterms are a disaster for Trump. But nonetheless, all this could matter a great deal for 2028. Even with Democrats winning congressional power, Trump will still have his ICE army at his command. While one hopes ICE will be partly constrained by Democrats in Congress, it’ll still have a huge pile of money and lots of heavy weaponry. And Trump will still control immigration policy.

Yes, Latinos constitute a swingy constituency and Democrats can’t take them for granted in 2028, even if they win big this fall. But it’s hard to see JD Vance recapturing many of them as long as they continue getting brutalized by Trump’s economy and deportation paramilitary. This Latino move back to Democrats, if it becomes a full-scale shift, may deal a blow to MAGA long past the midterms.

Trump and MAGA have pulled off some astounding political sleight of hand. They have openly advertised that their ideological goal is ethnic cleansing, recruiting ICE agents, and saturating official government communications with explicit white-nationalist appeals. Yet they also succeeded for a time in selling this agenda to Latinos as purely about law enforcement and public safety. This straddle was critical to sustaining notions of MAGA as a multiracial movement.

But Trump’s catastrophic economic failures and violent anti-immigrant horrors have rendered that balancing act impossible to sustain. We can’t be certain all this is driving the Latino early voting surge, but it sure looks plausible. If this early trend holds—and if Latinos help deliver a resounding Democratic victory—that chart on raw vote totals will have captured what may be the beginning of the end.