Where Trump’s Immigration Rhetoric Could Hurt Republicans the Most

May 17, 2016

By Kimberly Railey 

As Demo­crats grow op­tim­ist­ic that Don­ald Trump will help de­liv­er them big gains in the House, dis­tricts with sig­ni­fic­ant Latino pop­u­la­tions are emer­ging as a crit­ic­al com­pon­ent of their strategy.

The party is hom­ing in on a col­lec­tion of seats in Cali­for­nia, Flor­ida, Nevada, and Texas, where Trump’s di­vis­ive rhet­or­ic on Lati­nos could drive up turnout and cre­ate a dev­ast­at­ing drag on House Re­pub­lic­ans.

Demo­crat­ic strategists ar­gue that Trump’s poor stand­ing among this grow­ing por­tion of the elect­or­ate has boos­ted the party’s pro­spects in areas that were already com­pet­it­ive, while adding a slate of new tar­gets to their list.

“It’s go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult for Re­pub­lic­an House can­did­ates to run 10 or 15 points ahead of their pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee,” said vet­er­an Demo­crat­ic House strategist Alix­an­dria Lapp, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of House Ma­jor­ity PAC. “And in some of these dis­tricts, par­tic­u­larly ones that have a high per­cent­age of His­pan­ic voters, that’s ex­actly what they’re go­ing to be tasked with do­ing.”

Read more at National Journal.