Kamala Harris’ strength with Latino voters is looking promising in the polls. But a new approach might be needed to outstrip Biden’s performance against Trump.
It’s still early days, but Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance among Latino voters is looking promising. According to a Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday, 56% of Latino registered voters prefer Harris, compared to 34% for former President Donald Trump. That’s a significant surge from when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July; at that time the same poll found Harris was leading by just 6 percentage points, 44% to 38%. This comes as recent polling data from Equis Research, a research organization focused on the Latino electorate, has found that Harris’ entry into the race has let Democrats “reset” with Latinos and that she is outperforming Biden’s 2024 campaign with this demographic.
Yet despite this good news, Harris has yet to reach Biden’s levels of Latino support in the 2020 campaign, according to Equis. As she looks to rebound even further with Latinos, Harris’ campaign is trying a new tack: approaching them pretty similarly to the way they approach all American voters.
As The New York Times notes, Harris’ first ad targeting Latino voters, released a few weeks ago, departed from Democrats’ standard messaging toward the demographic in a striking manner. The ad begins with a mention of Harris’ “immigrant mother,” but it makes no explicit mention of Latino identity or immigration as a policy issue. Instead, it discusses Harris’ record and commitment to fighting corporate exploitation, lowering costs of housing and drug prices, and defending abortion rights. In other words — the same set of issues that Harris has been hammering home in her campaign appearances.
The ad represents a gamble: Democrats are experimenting with a new approach to attracting one of the most important demographics in the American electorate in a tight race.
