Donald Trump: “The Hispanics love me!”
“The Hispanics”: Not really.
The leading Republican candidate for President frequently likes to boast about his relationship with the Latino electorate, but new polling from Gallup shows that this supposed love affair is about as real as his hairline:
Gallup began tracking the images of all the major announced candidates for president nightly in early July. Since then, 14% of the roughly 650 Hispanics interviewed have said they view Trump favorably, while 65% have viewed him unfavorably, yielding a net favorable score of -51.
And when Gallup says “unfavorably,” they mean “unfavorably” as in the worst in the entire Republican field:
Gallup continues:
Trump blasted Mexico in his June announcement speech, charging the United States’ neighbor to the south with intentionally sending criminals of various kinds over the border, and claiming that as president he would compel Mexico to pay for a border wall. Trump has not only stuck to these positions through two months of heavy criticism, but also has doubled down on them, saying all undocumented residents should be deported and that children born in the U.S. to immigrants in the country illegally should not receive automatic citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
Gallup did not measure Hispanics’ views of Trump prior to his presidential announcement, and thus can’t quantify how much the candidate’s initial remarks about immigrants and immigration have hurt him with U.S. Hispanics. However, since July, his image among Hispanics has remained highly negative, averaging -51 in July and -50 so far in August.
