Two years ago, aircraft worker Mayumi Castro Fernandez voted for Donald Trump. But on Friday afternoon, she was canvassing a Miami neighborhood for the Democrat challenging an incumbent House Republican in a district where Latinos souring on the president could hand Democrats a win in next month’s midterms— and help propel the party to congressional majorities.

“All the prices go up — the gas, the food, the health insurance,” said Castro Fernandez, a Cuban American who identifies politically as independent and was canvassing with her union, which has backed the Democrat. By the end of the month, she said, families don’t “have all the money we need.”

“We need a change,” she said. “I change my mind. They can change it too.”Latinos have emerged in recent years as perhaps the biggest group of swing voters in the United States. And if results next month mirror polls that suggest the nation’s 36 million Latino voters are shifting in significant numbers in Democrats’ favor, those voters could be responsible for handing the party control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.

Traditionally a Democratic-leaning portion of the electorate in most of the nation, Latinos swung heavily toward Trump in the 2024 election — igniting Republican dreams of a long-term political realignment that could remake the American political map, particularly across the growing South.

But the economic frustrations that helped propel Trump to victory are now fueling dissatisfaction among many of those same voters with Republicans who fully control the federal government.

NBC News/Telemundo poll released this month found that Latino voters say by a 24-point margin, 59% to 35%, that they’d prefer to see the Democrats win control of Congress over the Republicans in November. Exit polls in 2024 found that Trump drew 46% of the Latino vote, compared with 51% for Democrat Kamala Harris. In the NBC/Telemundo poll, just 27% of Latino voters approve of Trump’s job performance overall, with an even smaller 20% approving of his handling of the cost of living.

“They’re moving away from Republicans for the same reason they moved away from Democrats two years ago,” said Republican strategist Mike Madrid, who has written extensively about what he calls a “dealignment” in which large shares of Latino voters hold no party loyalty and cast their votes against what they see as “failed government.”

“Neither party is providing a compelling vision or results-oriented policy for working-class people,” Madrid said. “We are in many ways witnessing an emergent Latino populism that is anti-establishment — meaning both parties.”The likelihood of another massive swing in the Latino vote is showing up in polls far beyond South Florida. From California’s Central Valley, to House battles in Arizona and Colorado, to a Senate contest in Georgia, where the Latino population is rapidly growing, a big shift in the Latino electorate could tilt a number of outcomes on November 3.

Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist who leads the progressive donor network Way to Win, said her group’s research shows that Latino voters believed Trump’s pledge to “shake things up” in 2024 — and were willing to ignore his harsh immigration rhetoric because they didn’t identify themselves as among the “bad hombres” he would target.

But now, she said, “they don’t see prices getting lowered, they don’t see an increase in jobs, and many mixed-status families are living in fear.”

“I don’t think we’re in a blue wave,” Gavito said. “I think we’re in a red sinkhole.”The shift is bolstering Democrats’ chances in Texas, where a Senate race that initially looked like a long shot is now a nail-biter, making it one of several traditionally red states that Democrats are targeting this year as they look for the net gain of four seats necessary to claim a majority.

Strong Latino support could also allow Democrats to retain several of the House seats the GOP redrew in a mid-decade redistricting battle last year Those districts, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, were drawn based on Trump’s strong 2024 performance. But if Latino voters in South Texas are now leaning in Democrats’ favor, the GOP’s chances of ousting 28th District Rep. Henry Cuellar and 34th District Rep. Vicente Gonzalez could evaporate.

And Democrat Bobby Pulido, a Grammy-winning Tejano singer, could oust Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz of the 15th District.

“Republicans misread the love and the fervor of the MAGA movement as being something that was really deeply ingrained in Latino communities, and overshot their hand,” Gavito said.

terviews with CNN, Latino voters pointed to economic challenges, including the price of gas and food; the GOP’s cuts to healthcare funding; and Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts as reasons for their dissatisfaction with the first two years of his second term.

“Immigration policy is very tough right now. That is precisely why the economy is so weak, with the raids and all that,” said Irma González, a restaurant owner in McAllen, Texas — a Rio Grande Valley city that is split between two competitive House districts. “Many people simply don’t want to go out.”

James Talarico, the Democratic state representative running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the key Texas Senate race, visited her shop where she makes homemade tortillas. González said her impression was that he “genuinely wants to help us.”“I hope he wins and does something good — something better,” she said.

Florida, meanwhile, is home to a diverse population of Latino voters, including Cubans in and around Miami who are traditionally conservative; Puerto Ricans in Central Florida who swung in huge numbers toward Trump in 2024; and Venezuelans around Miami and Orlando, many of whom are angry that Trump ended temporary protected status for Venezuelan nationals last year.

The state looked like much more of a reach for Democrats — not part of the party’s path to a Senate majority, particularly after democratic socialist Angie Nixon won its nomination to take on Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. But it has appeared surprisingly competitive including in the contests for governor and multiple House seats, in the final stretch toward November’s midterms.

Because the state mostly sits in the Eastern time zone and counts its votes quickly, strong Democratic performances could be an early indicator on election night of a blue wave set to sweep the country.

Karina Castillo, a Venezuelan American attorney who lives in the Venezuelan-heavy suburb of Doral, said she voted for Trump in 2024 in part because she thought he would bring more order to the immigration process. But nearly two years into his second term, Castillo, an independent, said she regrets her decision, arguing his policy has gone too far.

She said the Trump administration has jailed or deported “a lot of people” who are “doing things right,” including waiting for the legal immigration process to play out.

She also expressed concern with Trump’s attempts to revoke birthright citizenship and his backing of Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez who was vice president to the ousted President Nicolás Maduro.

“A lot of Republicans support him blindfolded, I don’t understand why,” Castillo said. “You cannot be blindfolded. You need to see what’s going on.”A strong Democratic statewide performance could help the party flip seats like that of Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a former Spanish-language news anchor who represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District, based in Miami-Dade County, and faces Democrat Eliott Rodriguez, also a former television news anchor.

Salazar won the overwhelmingly Latino district by nearly 21 percentage points in 2024. But she made waves, and laid bare the GOP angst over losing Latino voters, last month in an that was a message aimed directly at Trump.

Looking straight into the camera, Salazar told Trump that “some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.”“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” she said. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”Rodriguez argued in an interview with CNN on Friday that Salazar’s record doesn’t track with her ad, noting his opponent voted to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and criticizing her past comments defending Alligator Alcatraz’s conditions after she toured the now-closed detention facility in Florida.

“I think voters in this district are smart enough to see through this and see this as crocodile tears,” he said.

Rodriguez spoke to CNN after campaigning with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a coffee shop in Pinecrest as Democrats grow optimistic this district could be in play. “People are hurting. People don’t have money to pay rent. People don’t have money to buy groceries. Gas is out of control, and also this immigration policy of this administration is impacting this district,” Rodriguez said.

At a steakhouse in Miami on Saturday morning, Salazar made remarks echoing Republican messaging casting the Democratic Party as a whole as socialists, warning “this ideology has nothing to do with us or with this nation.” (Asked whether the democratic socialist movement complicates his campaign in Florida, Rodriguez said: “Let me make it crystal clear. There’s nothing socialist about me. Nothing communist. I am the product of capitalism and free enterprise.”) Salazar wove through the crowd at the steakhouse, snapping photos as Latin music played before speaking to voters in Spanish.

“That’s the beauty of District 27 — that you speak in Spanish but you vote in English,” she said.