presidential election

WASHINGTON — Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to crush criminal groups and slash government programs. He promises to bomb “narco-terrorist” camps and build sprawling mega prisons if he wins Sunday’s runoff election.

De la Espriella’s views have earned him the vociferous backing of President Trump, who has broken with White House tradition by publicly seeking to tip the scales in foreign elections — particularly in Latin America.

After Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to De la Espriella, whom he referred to by his nickname, “El Tigre,” the candidate posted an AI-generated image of a bald eagle and a tiger, with American and Colombian flags waving side by side.

“You have paved the way for the people to defeat the entrenched powers that have long held sway,” he wrote to Trump. “In Colombia, we have now begun to follow the same path.”

De la Espriella, a political newcomer who built his campaign around gym workout videos and vows to “disembowel” the left, is part of a new wave of far-right, MAGA-aligned politicians in Latin America openly borrowing from Trump’s playbook, presenting themselves as outsiders who will trim the government, curtail immigration and militarize law enforcement.

In a region that remains plagued by high crime and inequality after a decades-long period of leftist domination known as the “Pink Tide,” the playbook appears working.

More Latin Americans now identify with the right than at any time over the last two decades, according to polling firm Latinobarómetro. A series of conservatives have won presidential elections in recent years, giving Trump a slate of willing partners as he seeks to expand U.S. power in the region, combat drug cartels and counter growing Chinese influence.

President Trump meets with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the Oval Office of the White House on April 14, 2025.

(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

Among Trump’s many allies are Argentina’s Javier Milei, a libertarian firebrand whose dramatic cuts to state services were a blueprint for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE; and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a mano dura autocrat who housed U.S. deportees in his notorious prisons to assist Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa has welcomed U.S. Special Forces, who are attacking drug traffickers in his country, and Chile’s José Antonio Kast has pledged a border wall along his country’s frontier with Peru and Bolivia in his quest to “make Chile great again.”

Trump might soon gain another ideological bedfellow in Peru with the election of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of late autocrat Alberto Fujimori. With ballots still being counted, Fujimori was on track for a narrow victory

In a sea of nations led by conservatives, the left now retains power in just three key countries: Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

It faces serious challenges in two of them.

Ahead of October’s presidential election in Brazil, incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist stalwart and one of the last vestiges of the Pink Tide, has been polling even with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally convicted of convening a Jan. 6-style insurrection.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, right, with President Trump during a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 7, 2020.

(Alan Santos / Associated Press)

And then there’s Colombia, where De la Espriella, a criminal defense attorney, surged ahead in the first round of voting and this weekend faces off against Sen. Iván Cepeda, an ally of leftist President Gustavo Petro.

Petro drew Trump’s ire by denouncing the U.S. military campaign to oust leftist President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and a spate of lethal U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats.

Petro slammed Trump’s endorsement of De la Espriella, calling on Colombians to “vote freely and not allow ourselves to become either slaves or anyone’s colony.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also accused Trump of electoral interference after the U.S. announced drug trafficking charges against several members of her ruling Morena party and The Times revealed that two more sitting governors are under investigation.

“Is it truly a legitimate interest to combat organized crime?” Sheinbaum asked of the U.S. investigations. “Or are we perhaps witnessing how sectors of the American far right … intend to influence the 2027 election in our country?”

President Trump meets with Argentine President Javier Milei during the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23, 2025, in New York.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

The White House has declined to comment on Sheinbaum’s criticism. But Trump earlier this month warned Mexico that his administration is “focused on coming in by land” to deter drug trafficking.

“President Trump has been clear that Mexico must do more to combat the drug cartels running rampant in their country,” a White House official told The Times when asked whether Trump is planning a military operation there.

Trump, who publicly backed Kast and President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, as well as Milei’s political party ahead of Argentina’s midterm elections last fall, has openly mused that he should charge money for endorsement of leaders in foreign countries.

Guillaume Long, who served as foreign minister in Ecuador under leftist President Rafael Correa and who is now a fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, criticized Trump’s “unprecedented, unabashed interventionism in Latin American politics.”

“There are a number of taboos that have been broken,” he said.

Long added that Latin America is mirroring the United States in its political divisions. “I think we’re likely to see in the coming decades a very polarized politics,” he said. “And that doesn’t bode very well for political stability.”

Much of Trump’s activity in the region, including the deposing of Maduro, has been presented as part of a war on drug cartels, which the White House has formally declared terrorist organizations. Long described that rationale as a “pretext” for expanding U.S. political and economic influence in the region.

Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are escorted by federal agents as they make their way to an armored car for a trip to a federal courthouse in Manhattan on Jan. 5.

(XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

He said he believed that focus on cartels had pushed some Latin American politicians to the right “because they think being security hawks will make them popular with the Trump administration.”

But James Bosworth, the founder of Hxagon, a company that provides political risk analysis in Latin America, said many leaders in the region have come to tough-on-crime policies on their own.

“I think that some of the hemisphere is willing to play along with it because the hemisphere has issues, including security issues, where the U.S. can be of assistance,” Bosworth said. “Many Latin Americans do want a greater military focus, so there’s certain alignment that’s occurred.”

Conversely, Mexican journalist Alex González Ormerod said he believes Trump has been influenced by Latin American leaders, including Bukele, who suspended civil liberties and began locking up alleged gang members en masse in 2021.

“I think there’s a lot of cross-pollination going on,” he said, crediting groups like the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering of right-wing activists and elected officials that has hosted events in Brazil and Argentina.

Many analysts cautioned that Latin America operates on a pendulum, swinging every few years between right and left.

“There’s a lot of evidence that voters are just unhappy and voting for the opposition, and then losing patience very quickly with whoever is in office,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Stimson Center.

Voters dissatisfied with the status quo so often vote out incumbents there is a phrase for it: voto castigo, or “the punishment vote.”

Ceballos reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

WASHINGTON — Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with President Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.

The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.

The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, the summer of 2025 when the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall’s government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.

The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.

More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.

Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats’ and Republicans’ views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents’ opinions are still moving.

“Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.

Dramatic declines during Trump’s first 100 days

Trump’s return to the White House was in part fueled by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump’s favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views quickly soured.

Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and shortly after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.

Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.

“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents,” said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. “That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump’s coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”

Hispanic, younger independents grow disenchanted

Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump’s coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.

About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.

The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.

Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall’s government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.

Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.

“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”

The economy is frustrating many independents

Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans’ frustrations with Trump, including independents.

About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.

The analysis found that Americans’ views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country’s economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.

The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.

This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump’s second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Sanders writes for the Associated Press.