Harris leads Trump among Latinos, but margin smaller than past election cycles: poll

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Supporters of the Latinos for Harris-Walz campaign attend a party to watch U.S. Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris delivering her acceptance speech in Los Angeles on Aug. 22, 2024, the fourth and last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Harris formally accepted the party's nomination for president at the DNC which ran from Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. | FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

While Vice President Kamala Harris has a strong lead over former President Donald Trump among Latino voters, her margin is smaller than past Democratic presidential nominees, according to a recent poll.

A recent NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll found that Harris’ lead among Hispanics was the smallest in four presidential election cycles, NBC News reported.

According to the data, 54% of Hispanic voters supported Harris, compared to 40% who expressed support for Trump and 6% who said they were either unsure or not planning to vote.

Harris’ 14% advantage over Trump is smaller than the 50% advantage that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had over Trump when she ran for president in 2016, the 39% advantage former President Barack Obama had over Mitt Romney in 2012, and the 36% advantage Joe Biden had over Trump in 2020.

Additionally, Latino voter support for which party they think should control Congress is 54% for Democrats and 42% for Republicans, which is narrower than in previous years, NBC reported.

The report attributed this decline in support for Democrats among Latino voters to male respondents younger than 50 who do not have a college degree.

Data for the report came from a survey of 1,000 Hispanic voters conducted Sept. 16-23, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

In recent years, evidence indicates that Hispanic Americans are increasingly supporting Republican candidates for public office.

A woman holds a sign expressing Latino support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at his campaign rally at the Orange County Fair and Event Center, April 28, 2016, in Costa Mesa, California. | DAVID MCNEW/AFP via Getty Images

For example, exit polling from the 2022 midterms found that Republicans' performance with Latinos had jumped 7% compared to the 2020 presidential election, while support for Democrat candidates dropped 5% during the same period.

Additionally, according to exit polls reported by ABC News, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis garnered 57% of the Hispanic vote in 2022 when he won reelection, having previously lost the Hispanic vote by 10 percentage points in 2018.

Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Race & Ethnicity Research at Pew Research Center, told The Christian Post in an earlier interview that there "has been a shift underway in Latino voters' support for Republican candidates for a few years now."

"From 2016 to 2020, the share of Latino voters who voted for Donald Trump grew from 28% to 38%, according to a Pew Research Center verified voter study," he said, adding that there were "many factors that may be contributing to these changes.”

"First is the candidates themselves and the national and local context of recent elections. Who is running and how things are going in the nation can affect voters' choices … Second, how campaigns reach out to voters can make a difference too. For example, what issues are campaigns focusing on as they do voter outreach?"

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