Harris defends Latino electorate as Trump gains in key demographics

In 2020, President Joe Biden won 64% of Latinos, who made up a significant portion of his winning coalition. But former President Donald Trump improved on his 2016 numbers among Hispanic voters, particularly those without college degrees, according to a Pew Research Institute study. Recent polls show that Trump’s appeal among Latino voters has grown since his 2020 defeat, with some polls finding that he won nearly 40% of this key demographic.

Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican activist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, recently published a book, The Latino Centurywhich details how to win over Hispanics and provides a breakdown of how and why this group is so often misunderstood.

“There are more and more non-college-educated workers who no longer identify themselves as racial or ethnic voters, but rather as economically populist, money-hungry voters,” says Madrid, who has been observing the dramatic changes among Latino voters for years.

“The fastest-growing group of Latinos are third-generation, U.S.-born, predominantly or exclusively English-speaking. They are increasingly occupying construction sites, energy fields, assembly lines and manufacturing plants and voting like their non-Hispanic white peers,” he added.

As National Hispanic Heritage Month begins, Harris’ campaign is investing in reaching Latino voters, announcing plans to invest $3 million in a Spanish-language radio station and launch a voter-organizing campaign in swing states around baseball games and boxing matches.

The campaign added four Hispanic consultants to its team last week and is sending senior officials and Latino leaders to swing states to mobilize support there. They plan to organize around Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16 in cities like Phoenix and Raleigh, while also attending sporting events and tailgate parties in key states like Michigan. They have also launched a WhatsApp channel.

“We recognize that this community is not a monolith, and we are making sure that our strategy reflects that. So we have different accents in the different states, which reflects the diversity of the community in each of the battleground states,” a Harris campaign spokesperson told the ^ “Washington Examiner”. “We also spoke Spanglish, which is very popular with young Latinos.”

The campaign ran a pilot program in Arizona in 2023 to test organizing tactics and tools focused on Latino and women voters using Reach, a grassroots organizing app that allows volunteers to engage both in person and online. The program allowed volunteers to use their individual networks to talk to friends and family about the election and share content on social media or in group chats. The program has now been rolled out across the country.

The Harris campaign said it maintains 17 offices in the Grand Canyon State and plans to open a total of 19 offices across the state with 150 full-time staff. The first field office to open in the 2024 cycle was in Maryvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Phoenix. In August, the campaign made 34,000 calls in Spanish and knocked on over a thousand doors in predominantly Spanish-speaking areas of the state.

Madrid’s biggest criticism of Democrats’ outreach efforts is that they try to communicate with this group of voters primarily through Spanish or bilingual platforms. He pointed to recent polls that show Harris is more likely to be preferred by Latinos in Spanish-speaking and bilingual households than in English-speaking ones.

“The Hispanic part of the electorate is very small, relatively small, and it’s getting smaller as the growth happens with the third generation and beyond,” he explained. “That’s not how they’re going to win elections, they’re going to have to fight more for these third-generation workers who are born in the U.S. and see themselves as American through and through.”

“The other underlying problem is that Democrats, by and large, have a problem with working-class voters. Latinos now make up the majority of the working class nationwide, so they’re going to have problems with Latinos,” Madrid said.

Trump is trying to convince this group that Harris is not the answer to their concerns about the economy. Recent polls show the economy as one of the biggest concerns among all voters.

Republicans believe they can outperform Trump’s 2020 performance among Latinos by focusing on the economy and public safety.

“Latinos and Hispanics make up about 20 percent of the electorate, which is especially important in Nevada and Arizona. They are significant across the country, but in these two states they really make the difference, and they have been trending toward Republicans for the last decade,” pollster and communications strategist Frank Luntz said in an interview with C-SPAN on Sunday.

“I think Trump has a chance of winning about 45 percent of them. That would be the best result the Republicans have ever had. And if the Republicans get 45 percent of the Latino vote, they have won,” Luntz added.

Madrid downplays some expectations that Trump could win 40 percent of the Latino vote, pointing to examples like his recent comments at the debate amplifying false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were kidnapping and eating pets.

“He’s gotten into this pet-eating immigrant phase that really limits his upside,” Madrid said. “He was on track to build on his gains in 2020; he’s probably put a stop to that, and by all estimates he’s going to keep that rhetoric going, and that’s not going to help him.”

The Trump campaign said it was working to engage voters at events and rallies, through door-to-door canvassing, phone canvassing, and participation in festivals and parades. In early June, the Trump campaign changed its Hispanic campaign slogan from “Latinos for Trump” to “Latino Americans for Trump,” emphasizing that Latinos are Americans.

“When they changed the name, it was actually a very smart strategic move, because most of these voters who are moving to the right and giving Republicans the biggest opportunity see themselves as fundamentally American,” Madrid said.

“While Democrats are drawing districts and saying you are unique, you are different, you speak Spanish, you are a small part of this diaspora, Republicans are saying the exact opposite,” he added. “I think that message alone goes a long way.”

The Trump campaign said its efforts with the Latino Americans for Trump coalition would be led by large groups of staff and volunteers living in the respective communities.

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“In terms of media outreach, we are also targeting Hispanic and English-language media to reach persuadable Latino voters in swing states,” Vianca Rodriguez, deputy communications director for Hispanics in the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the “The Washington Examiner.We also work closely with influential Latinos/Hispanos who are using their platforms to reach out to voters and speak directly to them.”

However, it appears that both campaigns have much more work to do with Latino voters. A recent poll by UnidosUS found that 55 percent of Latino voters nationwide said they had not been contacted by either Harris or former President Trump. In the crucial Pennsylvania district, where there are around 600,000 Latino voters, 49 percent said they had not been contacted.