Republicans think Hispanic voters are key to keeping the House majority in 2026.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting three House districts held by Democrats for their significant Hispanic populations in the hopes they can flip the seats Republican in 2026.
All three of the districts featured narrow wins by Democrats: Reps. Vicente Gonzalez in Texas’ 34th District, Henry Cuellar in Texas’ 28th District and Nellie Pou in New Jersey’s 9th District. In targeting these seats, House Republicans are betting they can improve on the party’s strong showing with Latino voters in 2024 — their best in decades — even when President Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot and in districts where the party’s candidates have underperformed the president in previous races.
“Hispanic Americans are rejecting Democrats’ out of touch fixation on radical social policies, and they are embracing House Republicans’ vision for economic opportunity, a quality education, a secure border, and a chance to achieve the American Dream,” Richard Hudson, chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, told NOTUS in a statement. “We will continue working around the clock to earn their trust and votes again.”
Republicans argued that the years-long trend of Latino voters shifting toward the GOP will continue in a midterm election.
Democrats counter that Republicans are overconfident, saying that if the GOP couldn’t win these districts in 2024, they aren’t going to win them in 2026. Some are also hopeful that the president’s economic record — his strongest appeal to many Hispanic voters — will lose its luster amid the ongoing tariff talks.
“Latinos are like any other Americans, and their wallets are hurting due to Republican tariffs and efforts to cut Medicaid, Social Security, and veteran care all while raising prices,” Gonzalez’s campaign spokesperson told NOTUS in a statement.
Republicans hold a 220 to 212-seat edge over Democrats thanks to two vacancies in heavily blue districts and will likely be able to lose only a net of three seats to Democrats next year to retain their majority.
The narrow margin sets up what both parties expect will be a hyper-competitive fight over every competitive district. Winning Democratic-held seats could give the Republican Party the cushion it needs to retain a majority if it loses in other battleground districts, like Nebraska’s 2nd, where longtime GOP Rep. Don Bacon is weighing whether to retire, or New York’s 17th District, where popular incumbent Mike Lawler is considering a run for governor.
The fight over Latino voters will be front and center in next year’s elections as both parties fight for a House majority. The Latino community has more persuadable voters — those open to either party — than any other group of voters, Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha said.
“The biggest factor in the election will be the Latino vote,” he said. “They will literally determine who controls both chambers of Congress.”
After Republicans hit a low point with Hispanic voters during the 2012 election, in which exit polls showed presidential nominee Mitt Romney winning only 27% of their vote, the party slowly made gains with Latinos in the following years and through Trump’s first term. The GOP’s progress accelerated, however, after Trump left office in 2021, culminating with him winning 45% of the Latino vote last year.
Pundits spent the weeks after the 2024 election analyzing Trump’s gains with Latino voters, attributing his campaign’s stance on border security, immigration and the economy as the main issues for why this demographic turned out to hand him back the White House.
“It’s the same two issues – the economy, and border security and immigration,” Helder Toste, a conservative political commentator, told NOTUS. “Especially the economy and inflation. And many Latinos remembered their personal experience under the Trump presidency.”
In particular, Texas’ 34th and 28th districts and New Jersey’s 9th District have all shifted right in the last election cycle: Texas’ 34th District with an 8.3-point GOP shift, Texas’ 28th District with a 5.1-point GOP shift and New Jersey’s 9th District with a 6.4-point GOP shift, according to the Cook Political Report Partisan Voting Index.
Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has been critical of Trump in the past, said he thought House Republicans, armed with the right message and candidates, could easily match Trump’s performance in Hispanic-heavy districts. But he cautioned that the president’s economic agenda in the early going of his second term, including his fights over tariffs with many of the world’s largest economies, risks backlash.
“Hispanic voters, like many blue-collar Americans, believed a vote for Trump would mean going back to better economic times,” Ayres said. “Those votes are seriously threatened if prices go up and the economy slows, because they voted for Trump to bring prices down and juice the economy.”
House Democrats point out that despite Trump’s performance with Latino voters in 2024, their candidates still defeated GOP incumbents in a handful of districts, including in California’s 13th, 27th and 45th districts and New York’s 4th Congressional District.
“The NRCC can try to spin Trump’s 2024 success among Latinos as a proof point for their own candidates, but it’s not based in reality,” Courtney Rice, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “House Democrats were successful despite the top of the ticket shift to Trump because of our laser focus on economic issues like lowering costs. That focus, contrasted against the Republican record of broken promises, is how we’ll defend our Frontliners and flip Republican-held seats on our way to winning back the House in 2026.”
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Daniella Diaz and Alex Roarty are reporters at NOTUS.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misattributed a quote. It was said by Whit Ayres.