A new Rasmussen Reports survey found Republicans leading Democrats 50% to 42% among Hispanic likely voters on the generic congressional ballot, a result sharply at odds with several other recent national polls showing Democrats with sizable advantages among the same voting bloc.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Republicans held an eight-point advantage over Democrats among Hispanic likely voters in the latest Rasmussen Reports generic congressional ballot, underscoring a striking disagreement among national polls over the political direction of Hispanic voters heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
The survey, conducted Sept. 24 and Sept. 27-30 among 1,794 likely U.S. voters, found 50% of Hispanic respondents saying they would support the Republican congressional candidate in their district, compared with 42% who preferred the Democrat. The poll’s overall margin of sampling error was plus or minus two percentage points.
The Hispanic breakdown was circulated Sunday by InteractivePolls, which highlighted Rasmussen’s 50%-42% result and said it represented a 13-point Republican improvement and an eight-point Democratic decline from an earlier Sept. 17 reading. The account also posted the figures on X.
Rasmussen’s own published results confirm the topline Hispanic numbers. The poll found Republicans receiving 48% support among white likely voters, 16% among Black voters, 50% among Hispanic voters and 45% among other minorities. Democrats received 44% among whites, 70% among Black voters, 42% among Hispanics and 31% among other minorities.
The broader Rasmussen survey, however, did not show a Republican national lead. Democrats were ahead 47% to 44% on the generic congressional ballot overall, with their advantage driven in part by independent voters, who favored Democrats 42% to 33%.
The Hispanic result stands out because several other national surveys conducted during roughly the same period have found a dramatically different picture.
A separate InteractivePolls roundup compared recent Hispanic generic-ballot polling, showing results ranging from a Republican advantage in Rasmussen and ActiVote to Democratic margins of more than 20 or 30 points in other surveys. The comparison was also posted on X.
According to that compilation, Rasmussen showed Republicans ahead by eight points among Hispanic voters and ActiVote showed a four-point Republican edge. By contrast, Emerson College showed Democrats ahead by 33 points, The Argument by 30, McLaughlin by 29, NBC/Telemundo by 24, CBS/YouGov by 21 and Echelon Insights by six.
Independent reporting and pollster releases confirm that substantial Democratic advantages have appeared in several recent surveys.
An Emerson College national poll conducted Sept. 21-22 found Hispanic voters favoring Democratic congressional candidates 64% to 31%, a 33-point margin. Emerson’s overall survey showed Democrats ahead 53% to 42% among likely voters nationwide.
An NBC News/Telemundo survey also found Democrats leading among Latino voters by 24 points, 59% to 35%, according to recent reporting on the Hispanic electorate.
Reuters/Ipsos produced another substantially different result. Its recent polling found 52% of Hispanic voters planning to vote Democratic and 26% Republican, while President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Hispanic respondents stood at 24%.
Those differences are large enough that no single poll can be treated as a definitive measurement of the Hispanic electorate.
Polling Hispanic voters presents particular methodological challenges because the subgroup is smaller than the full national sample, which means subgroup margins of error can be considerably larger than the headline margin reported for the survey as a whole. Pollsters also differ in whether they survey adults, registered voters or likely voters, how they conduct interviews, whether Spanish-language interviewing is available, how respondents are weighted and how likely voters are identified.
Those methodological choices can produce sharply different results even when surveys are conducted at approximately the same time.
The disagreement among polls is especially notable because Hispanic voters have become increasingly competitive between the two major parties over the past several election cycles.
Donald Trump significantly improved Republican performance among Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election compared with earlier Republican nominees, narrowing a constituency that Democrats had once carried by much larger margins. Recent polling, however, suggests that the electorate remains fluid rather than firmly aligned with either party. A Financial Times analysis described Latino Americans as a large political “moveable middle,” noting that many identify as independents and prioritize issues such as the economy over longstanding partisan attachments.
Rasmussen’s current Hispanic result therefore points toward continued Republican competitiveness but sits well outside the range of several other contemporary surveys.
The pollster has previously received attention for the accuracy of its final 2016 presidential popular-vote survey. Rasmussen’s last national poll that year showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 45% to 43%, or by two points, while the final popular vote was approximately 47.8% for Clinton and 46.9% for Trump, a margin of less than one percentage point. RealClearPolitics’ archive shows Rasmussen among the surveys closest to the eventual national margin.
An independent pollster-accuracy analysis also ranked Rasmussen’s final 2016 presidential survey at the top under its chosen statistical measure, finding that the relative Clinton-Trump vote ratio in Rasmussen’s poll closely matched the final result.
That historical performance does not determine whether Rasmussen’s 2026 Hispanic subgroup estimate will prove more accurate than competing surveys, particularly because subgroup polling carries additional uncertainty.
The broader national polling environment currently favors Democrats on the generic congressional ballot. A RealClearPolitics compilation of recent national surveys showed Democratic advantages ranging from five to 14 points in several September polls, while a separate polling average placed Democrats at about 50.6% and Republicans at about 41.8% as of Oct. 6.
That national Democratic advantage coexists with considerable uncertainty over Hispanic voters specifically.
The Rasmussen result suggests Hispanic likely voters may be considerably more Republican than many other surveys indicate, while Emerson, NBC/Telemundo, Reuters/Ipsos and other polls point in the opposite direction. The gap is large enough that the final 2026 election results will provide a particularly consequential test of which polling methodologies were capturing the electorate most accurately.
For now, the clearest conclusion from the available data is not that Hispanic voters have moved uniformly toward either party, but that they remain one of the most contested — and most inconsistently measured — blocs in the 2026 electorate.
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