Republicans who have studied turnout patterns attribute Trump’s relative resiliency with Hispanic voters at least partly to standard party loyalty. It turns out that about 30% of Hispanics tend to vote Republican, plus or minus a few percentage points, and this group tends to be just as loyal as most other GOP groups.

“It’s because they’re die-hard Republicans,” said Joe Heck, a Republican and former Nevada congressman from Las Vegas who represented a swing district and usually overperformed with Hispanics. He suggested Trump’s support among Hispanics has a floor that he can depend on. “The bigger question is: How do you expand and try and make inroads?”

That question has consumed Republicans since suffering declines from the party’s high water mark in 2004. In that contest, Bush received at least 40% of the Hispanic vote on his way to winning reelection.

Even though Trump has not tanked the party with this community, the roughly 30% of its vote the GOP can apparently count on is dangerously low for competitive contests. It can leave Republicans too reliant on the white vote, the largest segment of the voting population nationally but one that is declining. For example, Hispanics are expected to comprise a plurality of voters in Texas by the middle of the next decade.