The Elitist Media Sunday shows continue to push polling doom ahead of the midterms which are now a month away. This week, polling hysteria centered on President Trump’s polling numbers within the Hispanic community, a vote that he won outright in 2024.
On CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan and elections guru Anthony Salvanto very briefly discuss Hispanics in their polling rundown:
WATCH: CBS's @FaceTheNation pushes Hispanic polling DOOM at 60-39 DEM- nowhere near 2018 pic.twitter.com/H8VrEUGYEc
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 4, 2026
MARGARET BRENNAN: Hispanic voters were so pivotal in 2024 for Republicans. Where are they now?
ANTHONY SALVANTO: Hispanic voters have moved more towards the Democrats than they were in 2024. And what that means is that the Republicans will not necessarily get the gains out of redistricting that they had hoped for if they can't keep those Hispanic voter gains that they made in 2024. Hispanic voters just as concerned about the economy and also a little more concerned about the president’s focus on deportation.
The brevity of the analysis makes for the most reductive, suggesting that Hispanics are single-issue when it comes to immigration. This isn’t at all the case but it is certainly implied here. What you don’t see is a comparison to the last Trump midterm, 2018, wherein Democrats had a significantly larger advantage among Hispanics. Contrasting current polling against 2024 makes for a bigger drop in support for Trump and more dramatic story, but doesn’t reflect the full picture.
NBC’s Steve Kornacki did offer a more fulsome view of the polling history on Meet the Press:
Buried at the end of NBC's LATINO POLLING DOOM!!11!! segment on Meet the Depressed: "So you're not seeing a whole lot of enthusiasm for the Democratic brand."
STEVE KORNACKI: So again, it’s the economy and inflation driving it. View of the parties here. This has been a big… pic.twitter.com/DWPcl6Xj9R— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 4, 2026
STEVE KORNACKI: So again, it’s the economy and inflation driving it. View of the parties here. This has been a big change in the last couple years in our polling. Republican Party was 46 negative with Latinos two years ago. Look at that jump- 62% negative. Among Democrats, basically flat.
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, and that’s so interesting because negatives for the Republican Party, but pretty even for Democrats. So you’re not seeing a whole lot of enthusiasm for the Democratic brand.
KORNACKI: And it’s striking too because if we went further back in time with Latino voters, the Democrats used to be popular as a party. Now as you say, it’s very even there. So that has changed. So bottom line, what does this all mean heading into November here? The generic ballot with Latino voters, it is a 24 point advantage for Democrats. You see it right here. How did it look two years ago when Trump was making those big gains? It was a 12 point advantage for Democrats in our polling then.
So it’s doubled for Democrats from 12 to 24. So we talk about those districts that Republicans are trying to defend in places with large Hispanic populations. This is a major threat to that. But I do want to point out, Kristen, there might be that longer-term story we’re talking about. Go back to Trump’s first midterm in 2018. This is what the generic ballot looked like with Latino voters then. It was a 34 point Democratic lead. So Republicans made huge gains in 2024. They’re giving a lot of them back. But they haven’t gone all the way back in our polling to where they were eight years ago.
WELKER: Well, just striking findings with one month to go. Steve Kornacki, thank you so much for being here to break it all down for us. We really appreciate it.
Meet the Depressed opened with the DOOM segment as they ran their Telemundo poll. Additionally, they featured Telemundo anchor Julio Vaqueiro in their panel- the latest installment in NBC’s long-running tradition of bringing on their Telemundo assets only when discussing “Latino” issues.
Towards the end of the segment, though, you get the dose of reality that curbs the polling enthusiasm: Kornacki walks Welker through comparable past midterms, including the 2018 blue wave, and through Democrats’ flat favorability with Hispanics. When those numbers are explained, a different picture emerges than that of a single-issue monolith running back into the arms of the Democrats.
The late, great Rush Limbaugh used to say that polls are a tool of voter suppression, intended to discourage conservatives from going to the polls. These segments prove his case.
