Latinos are turning away from Trump’s GOP. That doesn’t mean Democrats are entitled to their votes.

Jasmine Crockett, the Texas congresswoman who infamously suggested last year that Hispanic Donald Trump supporters had a “slave mentality” regarding immigration issues, lost her bid Tuesday to be the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. Want to guess how she fared with Hispanic primary voters?

Good guess, and we’ll get to more in a minute. First, let’s talk about why the race captured national attention as a bellwether for both parties as they approach the November midterm elections.

For Democrats, it spoke to what kind of candidate and what kind of messaging would be most effective. For the GOP, caught up in a messy clash between an old-school Republican and a die-hard conservative with all of Trump’s scandals but none of his charm, it also gauged whether the party could keep the substantial inroads made among Hispanic voters in 2024.

While the contest between incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will be settled in a May runoff (a third candidate ensured neither man reached the 50% threshold), turnout reaffirmed what earlier races in New Jersey and Virginia had shown: After a year in office, Trump’s poor poll numbers are dragging his party down with him.

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The president is broadly unpopular, with an average approval rating of around 41%. While that approval has steadily trended downward since his inauguration, his ranking among Latinos has plunged sharply. Trump, who performed better with Hispanic voters than any other Republican presidential candidate in history, now finds himself with roughly 70% of Latinos thinking he’s doing a lousy job.

Back in 2024, Trump could rightfully point with pride to how he performed with Hispanic voters in Texas, particularly in border counties, which had long been Democratic strongholds. On Tuesday, Latinos turned out in massive numbers for the Democrats. In some Hispanic-majority counties, more people voted in the Democratic primary than voted for Kamala Harris for president.

Good news for Democrats, but here’s the caveat: They cannot draw the lesson that this is Hispanic voters coming home. Instead, both parties must understand they cannot take Latinos for granted.

This brings us back to Crockett — who lost Hispanic voters to her opponent, James Talarico, by 2-1 margins in some counties — and that pesky slave mentality.

Her comment echoed Joe Biden in 2020, when he said Black voters having “a problem figuring out” whether they supported him or Trump “ain’t Black.” I understand what Crockett and Biden were saying, but to again quote the former president: C’mon, man.

Both were very unartfully, if not outright condescendingly, expressing that Trump’s policies were not beneficial to Black or brown people, so how could they support him? Well, it turns out that people, of all colors, are complicated. And the patronizing attitude doesn’t help candidates win races.

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“If Democrats feel like they don’t need to earn the Latino vote, that’s the reason they’ve been losing elections,” said Rafael Collazo, senior director for political campaigns at UnidosUS, the country’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.

Latinos may like and support individual candidates, but they’re generally not satisfied with the Democratic Party, Collazo told me. This is because there’s a sense that Democrats are not properly focused.

“I kind of go back to a phrase that resonates very much with Latinos, that comes from a spiritual context: Faith without works is dead,” Collazo said. “That is the sense of frustration that Latino voters across the political spectrum are feeling.”

What earned Latino support for Trump in 2024 — and what the president has failed to deliver — was the promise to make their everyday lives better. That means lowering the cost of living, improving opportunities for a better education, making it easier to start a new business, and more affordable housing.

Now, I would say Democrats overall are better on those kinds of positive policies than Republicans, but the party at large is often bogged down by identity politics instead of focusing on the fact that, for most voters, a rising tide lifts all boats; it doesn’t matter what flag their forefathers flew.

Well, at least it didn’t before the president put the white nationalists in charge of immigration enforcement.

In her slave mentality comment, Crockett was expressing how she had a hard time understanding how many Hispanics didn’t feel like Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and promised mass deportation policies applied to them. Ironically, the administration’s overreach and outright abuse by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who continue to harass communities and routinely overstep their legal authority — have brought the issue home for most Latinos.

A coherent, humane immigration policy is critical for the benefit of the nation; that is clear. More broadly, the advice to both parties in the midterms and beyond is to focus on the basics if they want to earn and keep the Latino vote.

As Collazo told me: “It’s not rocket science. It’s investment and defending our rights and our presence in this country.”

That shouldn’t be too hard, right?