How Latino Voters Could Decide the Election—and How Trump and Harris Are Courting Them
With less than two weeks remaining until Election Day, the U.S. presidential candidates are making their final charge to win voters, and one demographic has emerged as a key target: Latinos.
Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris made her pitch in a pre-taped interview with Telemundo that aired on Wednesday, while her Republican rival former President Donald Trump gathered Latino business leaders for a roundtable in Florida on Tuesday. Both participated in Univision town halls earlier this month.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Making up roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population and 14.7% of total eligible voters, Latinos have the potential to be decisive in the 2024 race for the White House. Longtime GOP consultant Mike Madrid told the Los Angeles Times in June: “In every one of the swing states, the number of Latino voters is bigger than the 2020 margin of victory.” Indeed, in Pennsylvania, which is the biggest swing state in the Electoral College and which Trump won by less than 50,000 votes in 2016 and lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes, Latino voters number more than 570,000. In Arizona, which has the highest number of Latino voters among swing states at about 1.3 million, Trump won the state by less than 100,000 votes in 2016 and President Joe Biden won by just over 10,000 in 2020.
Read More: The 7 States That Will Decide the Election
While Democrats have historically done better overall with the demographic, Madrid also suggested that Latino voting trends can’t be taken for granted, saying that the demographic has “a much weaker partisan anchor than any other race or ethnicity in the country. We have lower turnout rates in large part because neither party is saying anything that we’re buying.”
Both Trump and Harris are trying to change that, and reports and polling have indicated that Trump has made significant inroads, especially among Latino men. Trump won 28% of Latino voters in 2016, according to exit polls, and 32% in 2020. Recent polls show him earning about 40% of Latino voter support in 2024.
While Trump is known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, American journalist Paola Ramos, author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, wrote in an op-ed for TIME this week that issues related to identity and race are less salient for today’s American Latinos as most no longer identify with the immigrant narrative.
Similarly, Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation, and Luis A. Miranda, Jr., chair of the Latino Victory Foundation, wrote in an op-ed for TIME earlier this month that Latino voters are and have never been a monolith and are varied in their priorities. Where Democrats have historically catered their outreach to Latinos around immigration policy, surveys show that checkbook issues are top of mind for most of the community this election year.
Harris, a daughter of immigrants, has deliberately taken an approach that shifts away from identity politics and emphasizes her economic pitch instead. “My agenda around an opportunity economy will benefit all Americans, but I am also aware of the specific impact on the Latino community,” Harris said during her Telemundo interview, referencing her campaign’s proposals on small businesses and homeownership.
Read More: What a Kamala Harris Win Would Mean for the Economy
Before her interview aired, Harris addressed “Latino men” specifically, posting on X, “Donald Trump has disrespected and insulted Latino men and communities. As president, I will invest in them,” alongside an outline of how her economic agenda would benefit Latino families. She made another post that said Trump doesn’t care about Latino men or their families, citing increases in crime and unemployment.
Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday appeared on Univision’s radio show El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo, where he also kept the focus on the economy, saying that he and Harris are working on “creating wealth” in the Latino community. “We know they’re out there working. We know they need to make more money. We know we need to keep prices where they’re at,” he said.
But while the Harris campaign, which is led by the first Latina campaign manager for a general election Julie Chavez Rodriguez, has made significant investments in Latino-specific outreach, the Trump campaign has tried to appeal to Latino voters by not treating them any differently—or at least saying so. “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,” Vianca Rodriguez, the Trump campaign’s deputy director of Hispanic communication, told NBC News last month.
Like Harris, when it comes to Latino outreach, Trump has emphasized his economic platform. He’s also leaned into his businessman reputation. “Hispanic people—they say you can’t generalize, but I think you can—they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have—oh, do you have such energy,” Trump said in Las Vegas on Oct. 12.
When he met with Latino business leaders in a roundtable in Doral, Fla. on Tuesday, Trump referred to his 2017 tax cuts: “We gave you the biggest cut in taxes in the history of the country,” he said. “We have a great foundation to build on.” And in his Oct. 16 Univision town hall, Trump mentioned that he will support greater oil drilling to address inflation, perhaps in an effort to appeal to the significant number of Latinos who work in the oil and gas industry.
Read More: What a Donald Trump Win Would Mean for the Economy
But whereas Harris has prioritized the economy over the border in her pitch to Latino voters, Trump has actually made immigration a focus. “The economy is very important,” he said at the Florida roundtable on Tuesday, “but I really think that the biggest problem this country has is what they’ve allowed to happen to us on the border.”
In speaking to Latino voters, including during Trump’s Univision town hall and campaign events in Arizona, Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance have not shied away from the topic of immigration, criticizing the Biden-Harris administration and emphasizing that immigrants “have to come in legally.”
Carlos Trujillo, a senior adviser for Trump’s campaign on Latino issues, said in a New Yorker profile published this week: “One of the biggest insults that you hear from most people in the media is, ‘Oh, Hispanics are in favor of illegal immigration.’ No. Having spent time with a lot of them, what they want is a clear, defined rule of law.”
Harris, for her part, observers have noted, has tried to flip the script when it comes to Democrats being perceived as soft on immigration. “[Trump] talks a big game about border security, but he does not walk the walk,” she said during an August event in Arizona just after her campaign rolled out an ad that claimed: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”