by Kamala Harris’ sudden replacement of Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee has energized two of the party’s cornerstones of support – pro-choice women and African-Americans – as well as millions of young voters who felt disillusioned by the Hobson’s choice of two . old white guys in the presidential race.
But the country’s estimated 36 million eligible Latino voters may be a different story.
Their importance in presidential races has grown steadily over the past 50 years, and Latinos are expected to represent nearly 15% of eligible voters nationwide by November.
Historically, Latinos have ranked among the most reliable sources of votes for the Democratic party, around the same league as Black and Jewish voters. But the party’s dominant advantage is now diminishing. Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump among Latinos nationwide in 2016 by a factor of 81% to 16%, but four years later the former president increased his share to one in four votes cast by Latinos .
A number of prominent Latino politicians and trade unionists have endorsed the vice president since the president withdrew from the race on July 21. Among them are some progressive Democrats who criticized Harris’s stark message to Latin American immigrants to the United States during a 2021 press conference in Guatemala City: “Don’t come.”
But it’s unclear whether Latino voters will give Harris a big boost in her bid to defeat Trump. First, they have different national origins as well as the circumstances and immigration histories of their communities.
Most Chicanos in southern California reflect their state’s liberal leanings and have little in common ideologically with the majority of right-leaning Cuban-Americans in Miami. Phoenix-based pollster Mike Noble notes that Latino voters whose roots go back to Colombia, Venezuela and other South American countries have flocked to the Republican party over the past four years.
Latinos are still not digging deep into their pockets to support Harris. Two Zoom fundraising calls with Black women and men were held on consecutive nights immediately after Biden’s bow for a total of $2.8m. Similar Zoom calls to Latinas and Latinos for Kamala on July 24 and 31, respectively, netted a total of $188,000.
Axios Latino has been tracking the views of US Latinos on Harris in collaboration with Noticias Telemundo and market research and public opinion firm Ipsos since the first year of the Biden administration. By the end of 2021, Axios Latino found that 48% of Latinos had a favorable opinion of Harris — but that figure had dropped to 39% by last March. A different survey of Latinos in 10 states found that sentiment in Arizona and Nevada lasted even days after Biden’s decisive debate performance in late June.
But a more recent survey of 800 Latino voters living in seven swing states delivered some very welcome news to Harris and the Democrats. Conducted by pollster Gary Segura on behalf of the Washington-based Somos Political Action Committee just after Biden’s bombshell announcement, the survey gave Harris a significant 18-percentage-point lead over Trump and surprisingly high favorable ratings among Latino voters i. Arizona and Nevada, which have the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters among those swing states.
In a separate poll by Equis Research released Wednesday, Harris is still a few points short of Biden’s support from Latino voters in the 2020 election, but still leads Trump by 19 points among registered Latino voters in the seven most competitive states.
Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, spoke at rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas late last week, and a new 30-second TV spot aimed at Latino voters has begun airing in English and in Spanish.
“Throughout her career, she has always worked to earn the support of Latino voters and focused on core issues such as health care, child care and combating gun violence,” said the campaign’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado. “Vice President Harris’ campaign knows the political power of Latinos, and we will never take their votes for granted.”
Harris’s performance in the polls among Latinos in her native California, she won a majority of the Latino vote in her two successful campaigns for the office of state attorney general, in 2010 and 2014.
But Latinos are not expected to play a decisive role in the Golden state or in any of the other three states where they are the largest. California and New York are widely considered green for Democrats, and the same is true in Texas and Florida for Republicans.
That leaves Arizona and Nevada, and the outlook for Democrats remains cloudy.
A November 2020 CNN exit poll showed Biden handily beating Trump among Arizona’s Latino voters by a margin of 27 percentage points, thanks in part to people like Matthew Sotelo. The 37-year-old head of a Phoenix nonprofit community organization is a registered Democrat who thinks Biden has done a “solid” job as president. But Sotelo feels there has been a welcome change in the political climate since Harris became the party’s standard bearer.
“The energy is different, and despite what the polls say about Harris being a dead heat with Trump, the momentum is swinging in her favor,” says the Arizona-born Mexican American.
As Harris stepped down from the presidency in 2019, Sotelo had some concerns about her record as a prosecutor in San Francisco who sought prison terms for people arrested for possession of small amounts of controlled substances. But he sees her as an open-minded politician.
“I think she’s done a great job [on the border]? Absolutely not,” says Sotelo. “But I understand that Harris has had an opportunity to grow as a leader, and she will continue to learn and grow.”
One seasoned Latino pollster warns that Republicans have made significant progress in Arizona. “Democrats are losing ground there, and a lot of it has to do with the border,” says Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University who oversaw last month’s poll of Latino voters in 10 states.
Felix Garcia agrees. Born in the Mexican state of Sonora and a resident of Phoenix since 2000, the 42-year-old business consultant has spent his entire life on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
“We have so many people from different countries at the border every day, and Kamala has never tried to solve the situation at the border,” says the registered Republican, who describes himself as a moderate in the mold of the Arizona senator. , the late John McCain. .
Garcia’s issues with Harris don’t end with immigration. “We have so many problems with the Biden administration – inflation, Ukraine, Russia, Israel – and she’s part of this administration,” he says.
During a campaign rally in Arizona last Friday, Harris drew attention to her years as California Attorney General. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers,” she declared. “I prosecuted them case after case, and I won.”
Mike Noble, a former consultant and Republican legislative campaign manager in Arizona, found that many Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada are focused on pocketbook issues such as inflation and housing affordability. Those concerns are unlikely to go in Harris’ favor.
“She’s done a little bit better in places like the Midwest and Pennsylvania, but in the sunbelt, Harris is basically starting in the same position as Biden,” he says.
The rise of Harris leaves David Navarro unmoved. The 27-year-old Las Vegas native is a registered Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020 and voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. But he says he’s done with both major political parties. and that he will vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the fall.
“I do not support their views or their policies towards Israel and Gaza, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing anything to address the causes of inflation, which are corporations and their price increases,” says the His father is a systems engineer. migrated from El Salvador. “They don’t value us as Americans, and I don’t want a presidential candidate who is run by the big donors who are billionaires and corporations.”
Related: Kamala’s tech connections: what’s Harris’ relationship with Silicon Valley?
A University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) scholar warns that many Latinos in that state, like millions of Americans across the country regardless of race or ethnicity, do not know much about Harris at this point. over her name and current job title.
“People know about Biden and Trump, but when it comes to Harris, she has a lot more opportunity to shape the story, introduce herself and recalibrate things,” says Rebecca Gill, associate professor of science political UNLV. “She has the ability to move her numbers more than Trump or Biden.”
In a volatile election cycle already punctuated by an assassination attempt, a debate debacle of historic proportions, and the nomination of the first Black female presidential candidate by a major political party, Latino voters could spring a surprise of their own even in swing states with relatively little . Latino populations.
“The Hispanic vote is large enough in almost every state in the US that it could make the difference between winning and losing, including Pennsylvania and Georgia,” noted Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who specializes in on tracking Latino voting trends. communities.
“It’s because so many people are hyper-focused on the Hispanic vote.”
