Business mogul Donald Trump proclaimed last month that Latinos love him. He might want to check the latest polling from Gallup, which found Latinos were more likely to say they disliked than liked him by a 51-point margin.
His results were disastrous compared to every other Republican presidential candidate on the survey, as illustrated by this chart released on Monday:
It’s not surprising that Trump is unpopular with Latinos. He opened his campaign by claiming the Mexican government was sending rapists and other criminals into the U.S. as undocumented immigrants, and his stance has hardened from there. Last week, he proposed ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S., and vowed to deport all undocumented immigrants.
Gallup notes that it did not poll Latinos on Trump before his announcement speech, so there’s no clear mark for how it affected his image. In their polling since, he’s been consistently viewed unfavorably.
Although Latinos don’t typically rank immigration as the top issue for choosing a candidate, harsh rhetoric against undocumented immigrants was considered a major factor in the GOP’s dismal result with Latinos in the 2012 presidential election.
Trump has succeeded in drawing Latinos’ attention, at the very least. Gallup reports that 8 in 10 of those polled had formed an opinion on Trump, compared to about 6 in 10 who had formed an opinion of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. None of the other candidates hit the 50 percent mark for familiarity with Latinos.
Bush is faring the best with Latinos, who were more likely to say they viewed him favorably than unfavorably by an 11-point margin. His margin of favorability has actually gone up, although it’s yet to be seen whether there will be fallout from his recent stumbles over the term “anchor babies.” The former governor has taken a more moderate tack on immigration than Trump, and opposes changing the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship.
Among Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a major advantage. She has a net 40 favorability score, and about 75 percent of Latinos know who she is. Only 25 percent of Latinos were familiar with Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. The results were even worse for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Sen. and Gov. Lincoln Chafee — only 14 percent of Latinos were familiar with them.
Gallup conducted the poll by telephone from July 8 to Aug. 23 as part of the U.S. Daily Survey. They polled a random sample of 2,183 Hispanic adults in the U.S. The margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
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