Democratic candidates lead Republicans among Latino registered voters in the national race for the U.S. House, 51% to 24%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The economy is the issue the largest share of those voters call very important to their vote.
Another 18% of Latino registered voters were undecided and 7% preferred another candidate, Pew found. The national report, published Oct. 16, is not a forecast of turnout or any New York congressional race. It provides no separate Finger Lakes or New York estimate.
Democratic preference and voter engagement
Pew surveyed 5,062 U.S. adults, including 774 Hispanic registered voters, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish through its American Trends Panel. The reported margin of sampling error for the Latino registered-voter subgroup is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points, larger than the 1.6-point margin for the full adult sample.
Among Latino voters favoring a Democratic House candidate, 77% said which party controls Congress really matters, up from 58% in a comparable 2022 survey. Fifty-three percent said they were extremely motivated to vote, compared with 41% four years ago. The shares saying they had given the election a lot of thought rose from 24% to 45%.
Those figures measure self-reported attitudes before the election, not actual ballots cast. Pew notes that turnout differences have contributed to changes in Latino voting patterns in past elections. The survey also found that 65% of Latino respondents who said they voted for Donald Trump in 2024 favored a Republican House candidate this year; estimates for that smaller group warrant extra caution.
Latino registered voters viewed the Democratic Party more favorably than the Republican Party, 53% to 29%, in another section of the report. Democratic Party favorability was 44% before the 2024 election, while Republican Party favorability has changed little, Pew said.
That preference did not translate into universal confidence in either party. Among Latino voters backing a Democratic House candidate, 42% said the Democratic Party cares about people like them. Among those backing a Republican candidate, 43% said the same of the GOP. These are views within each party's own supporters, not percentages of all Latino voters.
Costs dominate concerns
In the report's issues chapter, 86% of Latino registered voters called the economy very important to their congressional vote. Health care followed at 80%, education at 75%, the state of democracy at 69% and immigration at 64%. Respondents could identify more than one important issue.
Only 19% rated the national economy excellent or good, down from 26% in September 2025. Eighty percent said they were very concerned about gas and energy prices, compared with 48% in January 2026. Food costs concerned 78%, and unemployment concerned 59%.
Views on the administration
President Trump's job approval among Latino registered voters stood at 24%, down from 38% in February 2025, Pew reported. Fifty-five percent described their congressional vote as a vote against Trump, while 14% described it as support for him and 30% said he was not much of a factor.
Seven in 10 said his administration's policies had been harmful to Hispanics, 12% said they had been helpful and 16% said they had no particular effect. Sixty-one percent said the situation of Hispanics in the United States was worse than a year ago. Pew cautioned that the comparison period differs from the same question asked last year.
Among Latino respondents who reported voting for Trump in 2024, his job approval was 57%, down from 93% in February 2025. Thirty-four percent of that group rated the economy excellent or good, compared with 57% at the start of 2026. Those estimates rest on a subset of the 774 Latino registered voters and are less precise than the overall subgroup findings.
Asked about the administration's deportation of immigrants living in the United States illegally, 62% of Latino registered voters said it was doing too much, 22% said about the right amount and 14% said too little. Views differed by current House preference: 86% of Democratic candidate supporters said too much, while 47% of Republican candidate supporters said about the right amount.
The report reflects opinions at the time of the survey. Its methodology says participants came from a probability-based national panel, with Hispanic adults oversampled and results weighted to represent the population. Differences between figures from different years are comparisons of separate surveys, not evidence that particular individuals changed their views.
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