By David Hood-Nuño
MIAMI, April 6 (Reuters) - Republicans’ longstanding support among voters of Cuban and Venezuelan descent in South Florida, a cornerstone of the party’s regional success over the past decade, is showing signs of strain ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
A sluggish economy and high living costs, as well as President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda, complicate the party’s appeal to many Latino voters, creating a potential opening for Democrats in one of the GOP’s most reliable strongholds, according to about 50 business leaders, politicians of both parties and voters who spoke to Reuters.
The 2026 midterm could show Republican support is flagging among South Florida’s Latino electorate, whose rightward shift helped the party sweep Miami‑Dade County in the 2024 presidential election for the first time in more than three decades. And if Democrats are successful in building coalitions among Latinos — which doesn’t necessarily mean flipping House seats in November — it could last and pay off well beyond 2026, Democratic voters and party insiders say.
“I think there is a tremendous opportunity for the Democratic Party to make inroads,” said Marta Arnold, 80, who fled the Cuban Revolution with her family the night Fidel Castro took power on January 1, 1959, and who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 as an independent.
Democrats have been encouraged by a few recent votes: Emily Gregory flipped a Florida House district for them in March in an area that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, a district he won by 11 points in 2024. And in December, Democrat Eileen Higgins defeated Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez by 19 points for the Miami mayoral race.
Though early signs point to positive prospects for Democrats, they still have a hill to climb to convince staunch, skeptical Republican supporters to change their votes, according to more than a dozen interviews with Republican voters, party insiders and leaders in Miami.
”There’s a 50-50 chance now,” said Juan “Big Papa” Cardona, operator of D’Asis Guayaberas, on Calle Ocho in the heart of Little Havana in Miami. Cardona, who’s Puerto Rican, has heckled and joked with tourists outside the quaint but vibrant store selling traditional Latin American men’s shirts for more than 20 years.
It’s still early in the campaign season, but Democrats in the race have ramped up outreach to voters through town halls, door-knocking and rally events. The Florida primary is August 18, but in the meantime, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin has committed resources for get-out-the-vote campaigns and voter registration events, according to Millie Herrera, a Florida DNC member.
A ‘MISTAKE’ ON IMMIGRATION AND DEPORTATIONS
The administration’s hardline immigration enforcement policy may be the greatest factor weighing on Republicans, Arnold said, because in an area where more than 250,000 Venezuelans and 1.2 million Cubans live, according to the Pew Research Center, everyone knows someone who has been “torn away” from the community.
In 2025, the Trump administration removed at least 1,379 Cubans from the U.S. to Cuba via deportation flights and at least 3,753 Cubans to Mexico across the land border, according to a recent report by Human Rights First, a nonpartisan human rights advocacy group that monitors U.S. immigration enforcement.
“That’s a very big mistake,” said U.S. Representative María Elvira Salazar, a Republican whose district includes most of Miami-Dade County.
Rounding up undocumented immigrants the way the administration has done could cost Republicans the midterm elections if it doesn’t “course correct,” she said, which party leaders have acknowledged.
It could cost Salazar her seat, too, according to Dario Moreno, an associate professor of politics at Florida International University. Of all the congressional races in the area, Salazar could be the “most vulnerable,” he said.
Salazar took Florida’s 27th Congressional District seat in 2020 by defeating Democratic Representative Donna Shalala, who had won it two years earlier when longtime Republican incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired. In 2024, Salazar won by about 20 percentage points over her opponent.
Salazar is leaning on her signature legislation, the DIGNIDAD Act, a comprehensive immigration-reform bill that has amassed nearly 40 bipartisan co-sponsors, to clear the path to her reelection.
But the bill faces political headwinds and a rocky path to passage, according to an analysis by Greenberg Traurig’s Immigration and Compliance Practice.
National Republicans say they aren’t worried about South Florida. “Republicans have earned and will continue to earn Latino voters’ support by focusing on what matters most to working families in Florida: lowering the cost of living, safe neighborhoods, good schools, and a secure border,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Christian Martinez said in a statement to Reuters.
Still, with one of the narrowest congressional majorities in recent history, a handful of competitive races could determine control of Washington.
TRUMP IMPACT AT HOME AND ABROAD
Many Cuban American voters remain loyal to Trump, who has stepped up pressure on the island’s communist government and talked openly about regime change. Luis Medina, 78, a member of the historic Domino Park club in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, said he will always support Trump.
Medina moved to the United States 26 years ago and became a citizen shortly after. He voted for Trump all three times. While dominoes clacked and fell on the dozen or so tables around him, many players looked over and nodded in approval as he spoke.
Trump’s actions in Venezuela have also cheered many exiles. When President Nicolas Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in January, the Venezuelan diaspora all over the world cheered, danced and partied, hopeful that authoritarianism went with Maduro to jail.
But when Trump said publicly that his interest in the country wasn’t regime change, but the country’s vast oil supply, some doubts crept in for Venezuelan Americans like Gustavo Grossmann, a former HBO executive and longtime Miami resident.
For Grossmann, who voted for Trump in the last two elections, Maduro’s capture felt like a relief, that political change was on the horizon. But with the rest of Maduro’s government still in place, that hope has been dashed, as the “comprehensive” changes he was expecting have yet to materialize, he said.
For many, Trump’s policies at home are more important. In the first year of Trump’s second term, more than two in three Latinos said their situation had worsened in the past year and about 80% said Trump’s policies did more harm to Latinos than helped them, according to a November Pew Research Center survey.
Manuel Carranque, 56, a Venezuelan American living in South Florida, views Trump’s immigration crackdown as a moral failure, especially with the deaths of two American citizens at the hands of immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis. “I think Republicans are going to lose the midterms,” said Carranque, vice president of international markets for vegetable oils for StoneX, a global financial services company.
Martha Arias hears the same refrain every week from Cuban American families at her immigration law office: “I never thought this would happen to me,” most of them tell her, referring to a family member detained and deported by immigration authorities.
Last year was the busiest year for Arias, a partner at her small firm, Arias Villa Law PLLC, in the nearly 30 years she’s practiced immigration law in Miami.
Arias said Cuban Americans seeking her help for a family member in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention keep telling her the same thing: “I regret my vote.”
(Reporting by David Hood-Nuño; Editing by Kat Stafford and Claudia Parsons)
