Despite the flurry of criminal charges pressed against him, former President Donald Trump has seemingly defied expectations and is performing quite well in the various Republican primary and general election polls when compared against, respectively, his GOP rivals and President Joe Biden.
One demographic group among whom Trump has surprised prognosticators with an improved standing is Hispanic voters, particularly among those who are registered voters and lean toward the Republican Party, Fox News reported.
That said, and regardless of the apparent gains and momentum for the former president, Hispanic voters as a whole tend to favor President Biden over Trump in a prospective 2024 rematch of the 2020 election.
Univision recently published the results of what it claims is the "largest survey among Hispanics carried out in the current electoral cycle" that included 1,400 registered voters, around half of which were registered Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.
Among those Republican voters, 50% said they planned to vote for former President Trump in the upcoming primary elections, with the next closest candidate being Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 12%, all of the rest of the GOP candidates mired in the single-digits, and 13% who remain undecided as of yet.
The pollsters further found that when asked who their second choice would be if their preferred candidate could no longer be voted for, another 10% of respondents indicated that it would be Trump, giving him a theoretically combined 60% support among Hispanic GOP voters.
Interestingly enough, and despite Trump's mounting legal woes and the incessant attacks against him by his critics on the left, right, and in the media, the Univision pollsters found that the former president's favorability had increased to 36% among all Hispanic voters -- a four-point improvement from the 32% favorability among that cohort when he left office in January 2021.
Unfortunately for Trump, however, those gains among Hispanic voters don't appear to be sufficient to win that particular group over in a hypothetical 2024 matchup between Trump and President Biden.
If that election were to be held immediately instead of next November, Biden would prevail among all Hispanic voters with 58% of the vote compared to 31% for Trump, with 11% who are undecided on which of the two to support.
According to Fox News, the Director of Polling and Data at Univision Noticias, Sergio García-Rios, said in a statement about the polling results, "This first-of-its-kind national poll demonstrates the wants and needs across the Hispanic community, and particularly an in-depth insight into the Republican Primary Hispanic Voter."
"This poll provides an opportunity to understand the complex and varied sentiments within the community across the country," they added.
The Univision poll results for the Republican primary aren't too dissimilar from the RealClearPolitics average of primary polls, which pegs Trump's support nationally at 56.6%, more than 42 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Gov. DeSantis, who garners around 14.4% support, while all others stand at less than 6%.
As for the presumptive 2024 Biden-Trump rematch, RCP currently shows that Trump has a slight 1.1% lead over Biden with an average of 45.4% for the former president compared to 44.3% for the current incumbent.
Of course, there are still several months to go before any primary votes are cast, and more than a year until the presidential election, which means that a lot can change between now and then with regard to the candidates and whether or not they will even still be running for office at that time.
