Donald Trump, perhaps unsurprisingly, fares badly among Hispanics,  a poll released this week shows. But in what might come as a shock to some, it appears to have little to do with Trump’s hard-line immigration views.

Even if Latinos oppose an immigration crackdown, it’s not necessarily a deal breaker.

The Quinnipiac poll, which gave Democrat Hillary Clinton a lead of 4 percentage points among all likely voters, revealed that only 18 percent of Hispanic voters plan to vote for Trump. An even smaller share, 14 percent, hold a favorable view of the presumptive Republican nominee.

Nevertheless, 23 percent of Latinos said they believe Trump would do the better job handling immigration — that’s the same percentage of Hispanics who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. That exceeds the percentage of Hispanics who rate Trump higher on honesty, nuclear weapons, and responding to an international crisis. Put another way, Trump’s immigration views are more popular among Hispanics than he is.

Some immigration experts said the results are consistent with other findings on Hispanic public opinion.

“The polls have shown that Hispanic voters don’t necessarily base their vote on immigration policies,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It falls pretty far down the list of concerns.”

A survey taken in September and October 2014 by the Pew Research Center backs that up. Some 73 percent of Hispanics in that poll rated immigration as very or extremely important, well behind education (92 percent), jobs and the economy (91 percent), and health care (86 percent).

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0351ppFeDE”]

“What the Republicans have failed to do is make an economic pitch to Hispanic voters, basically laying out the case to them,” Mehlman said.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, said Republicans mistakenly concluded after the 2012 election that immigration was the barrier to winning more Latino support. He said Hispanics have favored tighter immigration controls in large numbers on some surveys that ask questions such as whether the country should allow higher numbers of immigrants when Americans are out of work.

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“This has been one of the things really flying in the face of the Republican autopsy back in 2013,” he said, referring to a report commissioned by the Republican National Committee to examine the 2012 election. “That autopsy is what led to the dethroning of the Republican Establishment.”

[lz_table title=”Trump and Hispanics” source=”Quinnipiac Poll”]Percentage of Hispanics who…
Will Vote for Trump,18%
View Trump Favorably,14%
Favor Trump on Immigration,23%
[/lz_table]

A Pew survey in April indicated widespread opposition to Trump’s signature issue — building a wall along the border with Mexico. Latinos in the survey opposed the idea by a margin of 81 percent to 16 percent.

But other polling makes clear the Hispanics are far from monolithic on immigration. In the 2014 Pew poll, 47 percent of Hispanics favored accelerating the processing of the minors who are arriving at the border in record numbers, even if it meant some people eligible for asylum would be sent home. And by a margin of 46 percent to 34 percent, Hispanics disapproved of President Obama’s handling of the crisis.

In 2011, a Pew poll found that 23 percent of Hispanics even favored a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Even if Latinos oppose an immigration crackdown, it’s not necessarily a deal breaker. In the 2014 Pew survey, 54 percent of Hispanics said they would be willing to vote for a candidate they disagreed with on the issue.

Given all of that data, Beck said the Quinnipiac poll indicates that Trump is unpopular with Hispanics for reasons that have little to do with immigration.

“It’s important how you talk about those issues,” he said.