Latino voters will influence the 2024 presidential election, but neither Democratic nominee Kamala Harris nor Republican nominee Donald Trump seem that interested right now.
The first Harris-Trump presidential debate will take place on Tuesday, however, the candidates must avoid a big mistake of the last head-to-head.
On June 27, when Trump debated President Joe Biden, then his opponent, both failed to address issues related to the concerns of Latino voters .
This, despite news that very morning from the U.S. Census that Latinos drove 71% of the nation’s growth from 2022 to 2023.
Worse yet, meager nods to this diverse cohort of voters were framed as part of the contentious immigration policy argument, and not the top concerns Latinos say they actually care about in poll after poll.
New polling data released Wednesday is a warning to the campaigns that they’d better step up their games in a close election in which a small number of votes by motivated citizens will be the difference between winning and losing.
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Latino votes proved decisive to Biden’s victory in 2020
On Sept. 4, UnidosUS, a Washington D.C.-based national civil rights organization formerly known as National Council of La Raza, released an in-depth poll of 3,000 eligible Latino voters. Around 55% of respondents said that neither Republican nor Democrat parties or organizations have contacted them to ask for their support.
Harris holds a 27 percentage point lead over Trump (59% to 31%) in the poll.
That is a significant improvement from a May USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll showing Hispanic voters preferred Biden to Trump, but only 34% to 28%.
Even so, Harris’ lead may not be enough to win her the election.
Here is the share of the Latino vote for winning candidates received since 1980, according to the Pew Research Center:
- 1980: Ronald Reagan, Republican, 35%
- 1984: Reagan, 37%
- 1988: George H.W. Bush, Republican, 30%
- 1992: Bill Clinton, Democrat, 61%
- 1996: Clinton, 72%
- 2000: George W. Bush, Republican, 35%
- 2004: Bush, 40%
- 2008: Barack Obama, Democrat, 67%
- 2012: Obama, 71%
- 2016: Donald Trump , Republican, 28%
- 2020: Joe Biden, Democrat, 61%
The Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA released a report in 2021 showing that Latino voters were decisive in Biden’s 2020 victory.
“On the heels of their 2018 record-breaking electoral engagement, Latino voters showed up to the polls and swayed electoral outcomes during the 2020 presidential election,” the report’s authors wrote.
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As the UnidosUS poll shows, however, Harris’s share of the Latino vote currently fall below that of any of the Democrats who won the presidency over the last four decades. Meanwhile, Trump’s share is better than the percentage of Latino votes he received in his 2016 victory.
Latinos are not monolithic, but they are a cohort with a shared experience
Biden won the 2020 election by 7 million votes.
Of the 65 million Latinos in the U.S., 31.2 million are citizens of voting age, and 18 million are registered voters, according to UnidosUS.
But there’s more, according to the organization.
- 37% of the Latino electorate is new since 2016
- 23% of Latino voters are eligible to vote for president for the first time in 2024
That said, it is important to remember that Latinos are not a monolithic group. They include Chicanos in Texas and California, Puerto Ricans in New York and Orlando, Cubans and Venezuelans in Miami, Salvadorans in Washington, D.C., and growing numbers of Latinos, in Detroit and especially in the South, including Tennessee and Georgia.
However, since 1980, the U.S. Census has categorized people with roots in Spanish-speaking countries (including former Mexican territory in the West and Southwest) as “Hispanic.”
This has created the impression of a “Latino vote,” but experts, including Ana Valdez, CEO of the Latino Donor Collaborative , prefer to call the group a cohort, defined as “a group of people with a shared characteristic,” rather than an ethnicity or other designation that may imply monolith to some.
While historically, a majority of Latinos has sided with Democrats, there are a significant number of Republicans.
Trump has been more eager to reach them through appearances on Spanish-language media, but Harris did give a radio interview to the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision on Thursday.
These are the Top 5 issues Latino voters say they care about
A problem critics in the community have noted, including the UnidosUS pollsters, is that candidates suddenly become interested in the community every four years during presidential election years, but then forget about them afterward.
“You know that the stereotype and the rhetoric and some political campaigns and some political issues actually have been using the Latino community a little bit as a scapegoat,” Valdez told me in an interview in August. “That's my personal opinion, but the numbers actually show that I'm not wrong.”
And despite the focus on immigration, the UnidosUS shows what Latino voters’ top issues of importance are:
- Inflation and the rising cost of living
- Jobs and the economy
- Lack of affordable housing/high rents
- Health care
Finally, immigration and border security and crime / gun violence are tied at No. 5.
These issues mirror those facing the entire country, but collectively Hispanics have lower household income and home ownership rates, higher indices of health conditions and historically less access to opportunities.
So, when Harris and Trump debate on Tuesday, they should address these top issues for Latino voters in a meaningful and respectful way.
Turn away from fearmongering and focus on how to families’ lives better.
It could mean the difference between winning and losing the election.
David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He is an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or find him on X at @davidplazas . Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we may publish it online and in print.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Harris and Trump must step up their game to attract Latino voters
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