AP Photo Poll: Clinton crushes Trump among Hispanics

Donald Trump has often boasted that he would win with Hispanic voters in a general election.

Now comes some new data to test that dubious theory: Hillary Clinton is leading the 2016 presidential field among Hispanics, according to the results of a new poll of registered Hispanic voters out Thursday morning from Univision and The Washington Post.


The former secretary of state is the top choice of Hispanic voters overall — Democratic, Republican and independent — with 39 percent, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders behind her at 19 percent.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (8 percent), Trump (7 percent) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (7 percent) are all basically tied. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (who has since dropped from the race) had 4 percent and Carson and Kasich each had 1 percent.

Among Hispanic Democrats, Clinton has a strong lead, 57 percent to Sanders’ 28 percent. But that number has gone down from 73 percent in June, when Sanders was at just 3 percent among Hispanics.

Rubio leads Republican Hispanic voters with 27 percent. Trump, despite his remarks about Mexican immigrants, is in second place with 22 percent. Cruz, who like Rubio is of Cuban descent, follows closely behind with 19 percent. Bush had 12 percent, Carson has 4 percent and Kasich has 3 percent.

Altogether, three out of four Hispanics (74 percent) said that Trump’s views on immigration are offensive, while 23 percent said they are not.

More than half of those surveyed consider themselves a member of the Democratic Party (56 percent), 27 percent identify as independent, 14 percent are members of the Republican Party and 3 percent did not know or didn’t answer.

Ninety-five percent of those surveyed said their vote was important in the general election, versus just 2 percent who said it wasn’t.

The wave of anti-Washington anger throughout the country has been felt by Hispanics, too. Over one in two Hispanics surveyed believe things in the United States are going “pretty seriously off on the wrong track,” 33 percent believe they are going in the right direction and 13 percent were unknown.

The cell-phone and landline poll of 1,200 Hispanic registered voters was conducted Feb. 11-18 in English and Spanish. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. There were 267 Republican primary voters with a margin of error of 6.5 percentage points, and 731 Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.