WASHINGTON — Latino activists are angrily demanding that Donald Trump not host “Saturday Night Live” this week. Republican presidential candidates have been bickering over how debates should be conducted. And younger voters are showing little enthusiasm for either political party.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Republicans. After the 2012 election, a high-level party study said the GOP needed to be more tolerant and welcoming and “needs to stop talking to itself.”

But thanks to a wave of unsavory publicity triggered by the views and insults offered by some of the party’s 2016 presidential hopefuls, Republicans have to engage in some image-polishing.

“Republicans have a serious issue with minorities and young people. They keep ending up on the wrong side of public opinion with those groups,” said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at Washington’s Brookings Institution.

Republican Party officials said their party is making important gains, and the goals of the 2013 study are being met. Some, though, conceded that it’s not an easy task.

“When any of our candidates says something that’s stupid or unwelcoming, it hurts,” said Henry Barbour, an author of the post-2012 report and a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi.

He said, though, that on many issues Trump “has connected with people who feel they don’t have a voice anymore. There’s all kinds of things the party can learn from Donald Trump; things we can do and things we shouldn’t do.”

Party activists dismissed the debate flap. It’s “ignored by normal American citizens,” said Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush and a co-author of the post-2012 election report.

But other images tell another story, one that the party has been trying for years to overcome.

“If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e., self-deportation),” the report said, “they will not pay attention to the next sentence.”

They paid attention to Trump in June, when he said in his candidacy announcement speech: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting.”

After his remarks, NBC cut ties with Trump, who had hosted “Celebrity Apprentice” and partly owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

Many Latino and immigration advocacy groups, most of whom are considered sympathetic to the Democratic Party, haven’t forgotten his comments.

Latino views of Republicans have been steady for years.

“The Republican Party already had a low image among Latinos,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. Pew found 10 percent of Hispanics said the party shared the concerns of Hispanic voters in 2014. Half rated Democrats that way.