Written by: Randy Chow 🇺🇸
Marco Bello/REUTERS
Vice President Kamala Harris led former President Donald Trump among Latino voters by 14 points, a recent NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll found.
That’s the smallest margin of Latino support a Democratic presidential candidate has had since 2012, the pollster reported. Democratic presidential nominees averaged 41.7 points higher than their rivals between 2012 and 2020, according to NBC’s past polling data.
The Latino vote can prove to be a difference maker as Harris led Trump by 2 points among likely national voters, reported an NPR/PBS News/Marist National Poll. That lead is within the poll’s margin of error of 3.7 points.
The vice president spoke in September at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference, where she urged Senate and House members to help rally Hispanic voters for this year’s election.
She also spoke about topics, ranging from immigration and deportation.
“We must reform our broken immigration system and protect our dreamers,” Harris said. “And understand, we can do both, create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure.”
The dreamers Harris referenced are undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
Miguel Zarate, a senior journalism major and registered voter, said the reported decrease in Latino support for Harris was surprising. Zarate added that he doesn’t believe the Latino vote is locked up by either candidate and undecided voters can swing the election.
“We’re at that point right now where everyone’s paying attention, because we’re less than a month out at this point, so everyone who hadn’t been paying attention is paying attention now,” Zarate said.
Trump told his supporters at a Las Vegas rally in September that Hispanic Americans have lost their jobs to undocumented immigrants – a claim that’s not supported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Hispanics are losing their jobs,” Trump said. “Hispanics are losing their jobs to people that pour into our country illegally.”
Latino unemployment rates have remained relatively stable from September 2021 to September 2024 – decreasing by 1.1 points. Although, in recent months the Latino unemployment rate rose marginally.
The number of immigrants in the American workforce reportedly create more jobs – by expanding labor demand – than take jobs in the economy, a study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University and the U.S. Census Bureau found.
Exit polling data revealed that Latino voters were a huge help to Joe Biden when he won the presidency in 2020, according to CNN. The sitting president averaged 65% among Latino voters, while Trump had 32% of Latino voters’ support, CNN reported.
NBC polled 1,000 registered Latino voters with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
“One in five Latino voters in this election are going to be voting for the first time,” Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, told NBC. “Almost 40% are new since 2016.”
Paul Kettlestrings, a junior computer science major and registered voter, said he believes a possible reason Trump polled higher with Latinos is due to their religious beliefs.
Since some Latinos are deeply religious, that could influence them to more conservative viewpoints on topics, Kettlestrings said.
He also said, while Harris may not get as many Latino voters as previous Democratic nominees, she can still win the election.
“I think she’ll have enough support from other groups,” Kettlestrings said.
Sean McGeehan, a junior criminology and criminal justice major and registered voter, said Harris can pick up votes from other key demographics, like African Americans and Asian Americans, to make up for the potential loss of Latino voters. He added that there’s still time for Harris to win back Latino supporters.
“These polls, they can change,” he said. “We’re only a month away, so anything, anything can change.”
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