The Takeaways

• Polling of Latino voters has been stable at a topline level since Harris joined the race. Harris could come in a few points shy of Biden's 2020 levels, but polling is not showing a massive realignment of the Latino vote, nor a return to earlier levels. For Harris, what she is getting from Latino voters today in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania could be enough, but depends in most cases on what is happening in the rest of the electorate.

• There is still uncertainty, particularly among new voters. At least 30% of Latinos who vote in 2024 won't have voted in 2020. This is the segment of Latinos who have most fluctuated in their views throughout the year – and are hardest to measure.

• How we got here: Biden lost a segment of Latino voters in the midst of the worst of the inflation crisis. When Harris entered the race she immediately recovered most of them, but some voters were too far gone. Others stayed on the sidelines, waiting. Now both sides are fighting over the last few percentage points.

• There is a wide gender gap among Latino voters, as there are with other voters in the electorate, comparable to what we saw in 2016. The gap is widest today among the youngest Latinos. But gender doesn't fully explain the potential Trump gains.

• Latino identity still plays a critical role in the electorate, but isn't one-dimensional. If the election is a referendum on the economy, and the vote splits along the lines of who voters think is better for the economy, Harris will beat Trump among Latino voters by a narrower margin. If it is a question of who cares more about middle and working class families, about people like me, Harris will win the Latino vote by a wider margin. The best appeals speak to voters' identities both as working people caring for their families and as Hispanics who don't always feel invited to the party. All politics is identity politics. Some approaches are simply more artful than others. 

The Questions

1. What does the Latino vote look like today?

By The Numbers

PUBLIC POLL AVERAGE AS OF 10/30: 56-39 (59-41 two-way)
LAST EQUIS POLL (OCT 18): 55-38 (59-41 two-way)

‍2020 ESTIMATE (CATALIST): 62-38
2020 ESTIMATE (PEW): 61-39
2020 ESTIMATE (AP VOTECAST): 64-36
AVERAGE: 62-38

EQUIS | GENDER

MEN 50-50 (vs. 56-44 in 2020)
WOMEN 66-34 (+32) (even w/ 2020)
‍
MEN UNDER 30: 48-43 (Harris +5)
MEN OVER 50: 46-48 (-2)
MEN 30-49: 47-50 (-3)
‍
WOMEN UNDER 30: 73-16 (Harris +58) 
WOMEN OVER 50: 60-34 (+26)
WOMEN 30-49: 55-35 (+20)

Polling of Latino voters has been stable at a topline level since Harris joined the race. An average of publicly released polls over the last month has the Latino vote at Harris 56-Trump 39. Allocating undecideds proportionally, that puts the race at 59-41, down a bit from the 62-38 margin from 2020. 

Harris landing anywhere from 57% to 64% seems plausible. (The former would represent a 5 point drop from Biden, as in the NBC/Telemundo poll; the latter, a 2 point increase over Biden, as in the Entravision tracking poll.) Equis projects her in the middle, at 59% (a 3 point drop).  

In any case, the race is now a game of inches. At a battleground level, polling is suggesting Harris could do a few points worse among Hispanics, but it is not showing a massive realignment of the Latino vote, any more than a rebound to previous Democratic highs. 

*Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are from Oct 4 - 18; remaining states are from Sep 10 - 22
**For October states, 2024 vote is imputed for undecideds; for September states, undecideds are allocated proportionally.
***In-poll change is calculated based on self-reported 2020 vote.

2. Is that enough for Harris to win?

There are no magic numbers. What Harris needs among Hispanics differs by state and scenario. More often than not, the outcome will depend as much on how other parts of the electorate behave relative to 2020.

There are a diversity of combinations in which Latino voters could be decisive in Arizona and Nevada, especially. The growth of the Latino electorate provides a small cushion for Democrats. In many ways, the biggest question is where white support for Harris will land. Latino voters cannot cancel out serious slippage among white voters. After all, 1 point of white support is the equivalent of a little more than 3 points of support among Latino voters in Arizona or Nevada – and the same as 19 points in Pennsylvania.

Latino voters cannot cancel out serious slippage among white voters.

In Nevada, Harris has some wiggle room, and various pathways to hold onto a win. She could survive a substantive dip in Latino support relative to 2020 and still win the state, if all else stayed the same. Still, anything north of a 2 point drop in white support would be deadly, no matter what else happens. And it will come down to the wire, as usual. In Nevada in 2020, nearly 1-in-4 Latinos said they decided who to vote for in the last few weeks of the election (13% in the last few days). 

In Arizona, Latino growth offers some breathing room, but things are generally tight. Biden was the first Democrat to win Arizona since 1996, and the 2020 margin was razor thin. Harris could likely afford to lose shy of 2.5 points in Latino support relative to 2020 – if she wasn't also shedding white, Black or Native support. Public polling suggests there is, in fact, wider erosion. But never underestimate Arizona's ability to surprise: the state had one of the smallest Latino shifts in 2020 and a slight improvement in 2022. If trends hold, there should be just over 3 times as many white voters as Latino voters in Arizona in 2024. In 2020, it was a 4:1 ratio. 

In Pennsylvania, drops in Latino support alone are unlikely to alter the outcome, but become highly relevant if there is Democratic erosion elsewhere. Harris could slip 5 points among Black voters if she didn't lose the same among Latino voters, and vice versa, but couldn't afford both. But if white support drops a point relative to 2020, Harris likely couldn't afford any decrease in Latino support.

It is important to remember that polling isn't built to detect most of the differences we're talking about here. And any state that is going to be decided by less than a point is firmly in "field margins" – the kind of tight scenarios where an effective mobilization program can tip the outcome. 

3. Why are we here?

Biden lost a segment of Latino voters in the midst of the worst of the inflation crisis. Less-partisan Latinos came to feel that Biden wasn't up to the job of keeping them physically and economically safe. In a Sophie's Choice between the status quo and the heavily-flawed Trump, a portion began to favor the act-first businessman. For these conservative-minded, economy-first Hispanics, Trump had proven during the COVID pandemic that he, too, would prioritize the economy over absolutely everything else. 

When Harris entered the race she immediately recovered most of the Latino voters that Biden had lost, but some were too far gone. Others stayed on the sidelines, waiting. Now both campaigns are fighting over the last few percentage points.

Harris continues to swim upstream of Biden job approval. 

Biden's job approval among Latinos at the end of his first year in office was +15 in both Nevada and Arizona. Mere months later it dropped to -5 in both states and hasn't recovered since. Harris wins a majority of those who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden (56-28). Yet 38% of Latinos strongly disapprove of Biden, a harder group to convince (only 10% of them currently support Harris).

Trump and Republicans are still vastly underperforming their potential. Some 66% of Latinos in the last NBC/Telemundo said they thought the country is off on the wrong track, the highest since the economic collapse of late 2008. Some 80% in the NYT/Siena poll said the economy is in bad shape. And in Equis polling, 44% of Latinos still retrospectively approve of Trump's time as president, almost entirely because of the economy. Yet, Trump has failed to reliably poll above 40% since Harris took over the top of the ticket.

The voters who approve of Trump's prior term but currently support Harris tell an important story of why Trump and the GOP are falling short of a massive Latino swing: these Hispanic voters say Harris is better for middle and working class families (by a +50 margin), has a better approach on immigration (+50), and, especially, cares more about people like them (+75). This sliver of voters believes Trump oversaw a better economy but still can't bring themselves to vote for him because they don't believe he is on their side.  

Even today, 25% of self-identified conservative Latinos support Harris. Racial polarization has lessened on the margins, and ideological sorting has increased, but neither process seems either inevitable or fully-developed. 

4. What is the role of gender?

There is a wide gender gap among Latino voters, as there are with other voters in the electorate. Today, Harris does 16 points better among Latina women than Hispanic men. If it holds, that would certainly be bigger than the 2020 gap, which was around 10 points, or 2012, when it was 6 points. But it would fall in line with what we saw in 2016, when it was around 15.

The gap is widest today among the youngest Latinos, where there is a 29 point difference in Harris support.

What is behind that divide? 

While most Latino men under 30 still support Harris, a significant portion simply seem to like Trump more. Their support for him outpaces their partisanship and their down-ballot vote. They rate Trump relatively high in favorability, and, especially, job approval.

Most of all, these young men have a fundamentally different sense than their female peers of which candidate is the “stronger leader.” The young Latino men say Trump by a 23-point margin. The young Latina women say Harris by a 39-point margin. In all, there is a 62-point difference in margin in the narrative they tell themselves about the candidates.

Generally the gender story is not a clean one. Openness toward Trump has not fallen exclusively along gender lines. Essentially, the most movement in polling has been among men under 50 – but also with women in the “middle” (moderate, 30-49 years old). 

Does the debate over abortion land differently with Latino voters?

In spite of outdated misconceptions to the contrary, it is undeniable that a majority of Hispanics, including a majority of Latino men, are in favor of protecting abortion rights: 62% of Latino voters believe that the federal government has a responsibility to protect a woman's right to an abortion as a private medical decision. At the state level, we've seen between 62-70% support for ballot measures that would enshrine abortion rights in states like Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.

Latinos were part of the post-Dobbs surge that helped Democrats in 2022.

In 2024, the intensity is still there, it is simply a question of salience. Only about 6% of Latinos name abortion or reproductive rights as their top issue in an open ended question. But Harris has a massive advantage (+92) with them, and 90% of them say they are very motivated to vote. So, the issue is a boon for Harris; the question is whether these voters will be a bigger force at the ballot box than they are in the polling.

5. How should all of this change how we think about Latinos?

This much attention paid to changes in the Latino vote makes sense given the role this electorate plays in the successes of the Democratic Party. To state an obvious fact: Democrats would not have won the White House in 3 of the last 4 elections without winning Latinos. 

Take Arizona in 2020 as an example. Trump easily won a majority of white voters in the state, both men and women – 57% of white voters overall. That means 70% of the electorate voted for Trump by a 14-point margin. And yet, Joe Biden eked out a win in the state. How? Because he won the other 3-in-10 voters – Black, Native and, predominantly, Latino voters – by a 22-point margin. 

It isn't just heavily Latino states. Reliably winning a majority of what amounts to 3-4% of voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Georgia is also how Democrats build a winning coalition in closely contested states. That holds even when they win those voters by less. In an American electorate that can sometimes seem polarized to the point of stasis, Latinos are one of the last great wildcards.

In an American electorate that can sometimes seem polarized to the point of stasis, Latinos are one of the last great wildcards.  

The Latino electorate is in a constant state of change. 

Fewer than 30% of Latinos registered today voted in the 2008 election that set many of the frameworks we still use today for understanding the vote (compared to 50% for the overall electorate.) And some 30-40% of Latinos who vote in 2024 will not have voted in 2020. 

Latinos have always had an element of swing, because electorates that are younger or closer to the immigrant experience have had fewer opportunities or reasons to adopt a fully partisan identity. Some of that swing was simply obscured during a period when Republicans weren't even trying to win over Latinos. 

The existence of Latino Republicans is not new, but the Trump era is unique.

Some 30% of Latinos have essentially always considered themselves conservative – it's just that Republicans weren't always able to consolidate them, or grow their support. Conventional wisdom long held that a GOP candidate for president would usually win a third of the Hispanic vote, by winning most but not all conservatives and about a quarter of moderates, with some fluctuation. In the 2004 election, for example, Bush may have gotten more than 40%. 

If those assumptions become permanently altered, it would represent an important change in the country's electoral math: but there is no way right now to tell whether current dynamics are temporary or entrenched. 

Some of what we are seeing is unique to the Trump/Biden era. Trump enjoys the support of a segment of Latinos that other Republicans do not. Some 43% of young Latino men support Trump, whereas 38% support House Republicans, and only 27% support Senate Republicans. Part of what makes the Trump era unique is COVID politics. Impressions of the economy were forged in the pandemic era, especially for conservative Latinos and some moderate ones: there was very high support for Trump's stance on reopening the economy and living without fear of COVID. 

6. What and who will it come down to?

The last remaining persuadable Latino voters are the kinds of voters that have broken toward Democrats in the past, but cannot be assumed to do the same in 2024. Relative to other Latinos, they are more likely to be men in their 20s or women in their 30s, “somewhat” conservative and either immigrants or the children of immigrants. They are also more likely to have children at home.

Latino identity still plays a critical role in the electorate, but isn't one-dimensional. 

The remaining swing voters are more likely to speak Spanish at home and more likely to say being Latino is a very important part of their identity. A strong ethnic identity creates cross-pressures, where otherwise some of these voters might have long ago become Republicans. 

If the election is a referendum on the economy, and the vote splits along the lines of who voters think is better for the economy, Harris will beat Trump among Latino voters by a narrower margin. If it is a question of who cares more about middle and working class families, about people like me, Harris will win the Latino vote by a wider margin. Which will voters be asking themselves when they decide whether to vote and who to vote for?

If it is a question of who is better for the economy, Harris will beat Trump among Latino voters by a narrower margin. If it is a question of who cares more about middle and working class families, about people like me, Harris will win the Latino vote by a wider margin. Which will voters be asking themselves when they decide whether to vote and who to vote for?

Harris has a +4 edge on who Latino voters believe is "better for the US economy," the first time either Harris or Biden leads Trump on that measure this cycle. 

That is still a narrow margin relative to the lead Harris enjoys on who is “better for middle and working class families" (+22) or who "cares about people like you" (+25) — attributes that pick up different elements of the economy, factors such as abortion rights, and also identity.

Harris has the advantage the more specific and grounded the debate gets, both in terms of who it will help and what the candidates will help them with: who is more likely to help someone like me on the cost of prescription drugs, healthcare, housing, or childcare?  

At least 30% of Latinos who vote in 2024 won't have voted in 2020. 

What we don't know yet is how many of those will be new registrants versus previously registered Latinos who had earlier sat on the sidelines. These are the segments of Latinos who have most fluctuated in their views throughout the year – and are hardest to measure.

Will the Trumpy voters hiding in this tranche of irregular voters turn out, as white working class MAGA voters have rallied in the Trump era? Or will they sit out, as they did in both 2020 and 2022? 

And if they do turn out, might they be offset by the young Latina women newly coming into the electorate who appear energized to end the Trump era?

The strength of the campaigns at a state level matters especially in these closely contested states. 

7. How has Trump improved in spite of his deportation threats and rhetoric?

The small segment of voters we are talking about are a mix of people who are not aware of what Trump is saying or planning, are not directly impacted by immigration, or dismiss his threats as political theater. In all cases, they are voting on other considerations — firstly, the economy.

No, Latinos don't want all undocumented immigrants deported – quite the opposite. Yes, they want safety and order at the border, even if it means deporting those crossing the border right now or those who have committed a crime. But, overwhelmingly, they want to keep American families together, and reject the mass deportation of people who have been living and working here for decades.  

In the NBC/Telemundo poll, there was 39% support for deporting all immigrants. But when you get specific, only 8% opposed a pathway to citizenship for spouses of US citizens, and only 13% opposed the same for Dreamers.

Rejection of Trump on immigration still plays a major role in the Latino vote. That opposition is driven both by the foreign-born and by the fast-growing second-generation. In fact, it is a key attribute bolstering support for Harris among young Latina women, who say Harris has the better approach on immigration, 71-16 (+55). 

8. What do persuadable Latinos want to hear in the final days?

For Harris, the best appeals speak to voters' identities both as working people caring for their families and as Latinos who don't always feel invited to the party – inclusive, culturally resonant messaging that puts her on the same side as middle and working class families. Often it is as simple as, for example, what food you show in an ad about grocery prices.

Winning a campaign is about picking the right fights. What are the right fights? Taxes (who is going to get tax cuts?), healthcare (who is going to bring down the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs and protect Obamacare?), housing (who is going to take on price gouging and make it more affordable to buy a home?), and deportations (who is going to keep American families together?)

Harris' Opportunity Economy Agenda is popular, and provides proof points for the kind of fights her allies want to be having. Expanding the child tax credit, capping drug prices, and providing more childcare are popular even among those who think Trump would do a better job on the economy.

The first step in winning a fight is showing up. That is about showing up in person. That is about showing up virtually. And that is about showing up in both English and Spanish.