Vice President Kamala Harris’ West Coast swing, aimed at ginning up support among Latino voters, is a sign of the larger emphasis Harris and former President Donald Trump have placed on pursuing the nation’s second largest racial or ethnic group. But they’re chasing those votes in very different ways.
Trump, whose campaign is barely advertising in Hispanic media, according to AdImpact, is wrapping his appeal to Latino voters in a broader message of prosperity and nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy under his presidency, while also leaning on high-profile endorsers. Harris’ campaign is pouring more money and effort into advertising, targeted messaging and on-the-ground organizing.
Polling has found that most Latinos prefer Harris over Trump, an advantage Harris’ campaign and voters alike have linked in part to her own upbringing as a daughter of immigrants.
“Harris definitely understands Latino voters a lot more just because she is a person of color and is able to understand the community a lot better,” Mya Brady, a Pittsburgh resident of Guatemalan heritage, told NBC News.
But while Harris has the edge, the data suggests Latino support for Democrats is far from fixed: The new NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll shows Harris with a 54%-40% advantage among Latinos, her party’s lowest mark in four presidential election cycles. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all cleared 60% support.
That drop could have big implications, according to Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, which conducts one of the largest analyses of Latino voting habits in the country. (UnidoUS’ political arm endorsed Harris earlier this year.)
“Republicans don’t need to win a majority of this electorate, so they can be a lot more surgical with their efforts,” De Castro said. “Democrats need to get at least the historic 60% or so that they’ve received from this electorate.”
Latino voters represent a striking opportunity for both Trump and Harris’ campaigns: an ideologically diverse voting bloc that includes a sizable share of first-time voters who experts have found are more independent-minded than older generations. Unlike with the broader electorate, Trump did better among younger Latinos in the NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll, especially among men under 50.
“One in five Latino voters in this election are going to be voting for the first time, so they’re forming their opinions about the candidates. Almost 40% are new since 2016,” De Castro said.
Winning over those new voters will be central to both Harris’ and Trump’s paths to victory this November — not just in Nevada and Arizona, where Latinos comprise roughly 30% of the population, but also in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, where fast-growing Latino populations could play decisive roles in tightly divided states.
Trump’s plan to win Latino voters
For Trump’s presidential campaign, the large share of new Latino voters presents an opportunity to redefine the former president, less around his past derision of Latino immigrants and instead around his handling of the pre-pandemic economy, an issue on which poll after poll has found Americans view him more favorably than Harris.
“Republicans, I think successfully, have built the perception that they are good on the economy,” De Castro said. “That opens up opportunities for them.”
Those opportunities, according to Abraham Enriquez of the conservative-leaning nonprofit Bienvenidos US, hinge on Trump’s “understanding of the changing coalition that is the Hispanic vote.”
“Two-thirds of Hispanics on the voter rolls are second- and third-generation Americans, meaning that we are assimilating to American culture better. English is predominantly our first language,” Enriquez said on a Trump campaign press call earlier this month.
“Most of us have college degrees, and we care more about policies that uplift economic opportunity, rather than be bunched into what the Democrats would like to be focused on, which is these illegal immigration talking points that they think that Hispanic voters care about,” he said.
Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio also said the diversity of the Latino community stands to benefit Trump, asserting that Latino voting habits are broadly more in line with those of white voters than they are with other minority groups.
“I know that the tendency is to put all of those groups together from a polling perspective and look at them as, you know, nonwhites. But the fact of the matter is, Hispanics now are behaving politically and socioeconomically more like white voters than they are other minority voters, with the exception of perhaps Asian AAPI voters,” Fabrizio said.
That trend has fueled much of the campaign’s messaging.
“We have the same message for everyone, because regardless of people’s background, demographic, gender or origin, everyone is reeling from the current economic policies,” said Vianca Rodriguez, the Trump campaign’s deputy director of Hispanic communication.
While Trump has an advantage on handling the economy among Latinos and voters more broadly, there are other issues Harris can capitalize on. Those issues, according to an analysis by UnidosUS, include health care and health insurance, democracy, public education, abortion and immigration.
In the new NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll, Trump had a big advantage over Harris on handling border security, while Harris had a big advantage on the issue of treating immigrants humanely. And Harris’ advantage on abortion policy mirrored her broader advantage on the issue.
“Because Latinos are faith- and family-oriented, the assumption had been that they were against abortion,” De Castro said. “More than 70% of Latinos say that regardless of their own beliefs, they don’t think it should be illegal or want that decision taken away from others.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign’s forgoing of targeted Latino outreach has resulted in only 16% of the Latino voters across battleground states reporting contact from the Republican Party, according to UnidosUS. More have heard from Democrats, though a majority say neither party has contacted them.
Like with Trump’s outreach to Black voters, the campaign has opted to rely on culturally relevant entertainers as surrogates.
Puerto Rican reggaeton musician Anuel AA, born Emmanuel Gazmey Santiago, endorsed Trump during a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in August, telling Puerto Ricans to “stay united” and “vote for Trump.”
Pennsylvania is home to the third-largest Puerto Rican diaspora community in the country.
“I don’t know if these people know who the hell you are, but it’s good for the Puerto Rican vote,” Trump told the rapper while introducing him to several thousand attendees at the campaign rally. “Every Puerto Rican is going to vote for Trump right now. We’ll take it.”
Roughly a month later, reggaeton artist Nicky Jam, born Nick Rivera Caminero, who is Puerto Rican and Dominican, endorsed Trump onstage at a rally in Las Vegas, telling supporters in Spanish, “It’s been four years and nothing has happened. We need Trump. Let’s make America great again.”
That endorsement resulted in fierce backlash for Caminero, with some critics highlighting Trump’s past threats to programs like DACA, the executive action preventing deportation of eligible undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children, a policy Caminero vocally supported. Others poked fun at the artist for endorsing Trump even though the former president appeared to be unaware of Caminero’s gender.
“Latin music superstar Nicky Jam, do you know Nicky? She’s hot. Where’s Nicky?” Trump said while introducing the artist.
Caminero has since removed all traces of the endorsement from his social media profiles.