Love of country is so important to Navy veteran Antonio Gonzales Jr. that he keeps an American flag lit up 24/7 outside his home in Porterville, California.
So while Gonzales, a 66-year-old retired surgical technologist, admits to concerns about the direction of the economy during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, he said he is willing to give the administration more time to back off from his trade war with China and help bring down the costs of everyday goods.
“I know there has to be hard times before there’s good times,” said Gonzales, who is Mexican American and voted for Trump in November.
The surge in support from Hispanic voters that helped power Trump to victory has won since he took office, with his approval rating among Latinos falling 3 percentage points to 34% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week, amid concerns about the economy and the president’s hardline approach to immigration.
Trump’s disapproval ratings among Hispanic voters reached 61%, up 7 percentage points, compared with a 5 point increase among Americans overall, to 53%.
Trump won 46% of the Hispanic vote in November’s election, 14 points higher than in 2020, according to Edison Research exit polls.
While Democrat Kamala Harris won a larger share of the Hispanic vote, Trump performed better than any Republican presidential candidate since the 1970s, according to exit poll data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Some cracks are appearing in Trump’s coalition of supporters.
While Gonzales, the Navy veteran, supports tougher border controls, he admitted to reservations about the deportations of some people without judicial review.
“It should be open-faced, so we should be able to see what is going on and that it’s not secret,” he said.
Trump’s popularity has sagged broadly across a range of demographic groups, according to an analysis of more than 6,000 responses to Reuters/Ipsos polls that were conducted during his first month in office, from January 20 through February 20, and an additional 4,306 responses from the latest poll conducted over six days ending on April 21.
