SAN ANTONIO — Rebecca Contreras planned to vote again for President Joe Biden, but the 30-year-old Texan wasn’t sure he could win. Now, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the de facto nominee, she said her confidence has returned.
“Maybe there is some hope again and our votes can matter,” the social media marketing specialist from San Antonio, who considers herself progressive, said Monday.
Long seen as reliable Democratic voters, support from younger Latinos like Contreras has been a less sure bet for Democrats this year than in previous election cycles.
Democrats saw then-President Donald Trump and the Republican Party win a larger share of the Hispanic vote in 2020. This year, polls have shown a continued decline for Biden, with the two presidential candidates essentially tied among Latinos; the party also feared losing more Latino supporters to third party candidates or voters stay at home completely.
Latinos are younger than Americans overall, and hundreds of thousands of Latino citizens turn 18 and can vote every year. A May poll of more than 2,000 voters under the age of 40, including Latinos, found that just a third would vote for Biden. Among Latinos, 32% said they would support Trump, 28% chose Biden and another 28% said they would support “someone else,” the University of Chicago GenForward Research found.
Young Latino college students in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania told NBC News in April that while most supported progressive policies in line with the Democratic agenda, few expressed support for Biden or Trump.
One in 5 Hispanics will vote in their first presidential election this year, according to UnidosUS, a national Latino advocacy group. Of these new Latino voters, more than a third (36%) identify as independent or nonpartisan.
They are not so easily won over.
Dennison Pinto, 19, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, had been exploring voting for a third-party candidate. On Monday, Pinto said he prefers a Democratic president, but is not yet sold on Harris or any other specific candidate.
Fellow Allentown resident Jeremy Bautista, 20, voted for the first time in Pennsylvania’s local elections last year. He’s still wondering whether he’ll vote this year. While Bautista said Harris is starting to look like “one of the better options,” he’s not sure she agrees with his views on economic policy and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Young voters had “a general feeling that both parties are the same, nothing is going to change,” Stella Rouse, a political scientist at Arizona State University, told NBC News in April. This week, she said Harris can reinvigorate young Latinos if she delivers “a message of opportunity” and paints a picture of a future America that is multicultural and where young Latinos can take leadership.
Space for support?
Poder NC Action, a progressive group focused on mobilizing North Carolina Latinos, said in an affirmation that younger voters were not confident they would be represented by any presidential candidate or political party. After Biden left office, “we are more optimistic than ever,” said founder Irene Godinez, 41. “While we are not 100% aligned with Vice President Harris, we support the selection of a new candidate who will bring a renewed spirit to the fight of our lives.”
Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic firm that polls Latinos, said in a post on X on Monday that an early reading of data from a July 11-15 poll among Nevada Latinos shows Harris winning back some Latinos who have slipped away from Biden “and notably pulls a chunk who said he would stay out of a Biden rematch.” /Trump.”
His company’s past polls have shown Harris with favorable and unfavorable ratings similar to Biden’s, but performing significantly better with Latinas, including those under 40, a key swinger group.
Internal Biden campaign polls, conducted by Democratic pollster Matt Barreto, show that Harris is more popular than Biden among Latino voters.
Harris had a net 46-point lead over Biden among Latinos who said they disapproved of Biden and his Republican rival, Trump, according to the poll detailed in a July 14 memo Barreto and fellow Biden pollster Angie Gutierrez posted it online.
Harris’s popularity among Latinos ages 18 to 29 is 16 points better than Biden’s, he said. The hill first reported the memo. Barreto said the poll was conducted before Biden left office to determine whether Harris could bolster Biden’s campaign with Latinos.
Barreto said Harris won the Latino vote in California when she ran for attorney general in 2010 and 2014 and defeated Rep. Loretta Sanchez for the Senate seat in 2016.
“She has the opportunity to reverse the media narrative that Democrats are losing Latino support because she appears to be quite popular among Latinos, and as Latinos learn more about her, I expect her favorability ratings to increase.” , Barreto told NBC News on Tuesday. .
Harris faces frustration from voters — as well as Republican attacks — over the high cost of living, which Latinos repeatedly point to as their top concern in polls, as well as immigration. Republicans have mistakenly called her the border czaralthough his work focused on working with Central American countries on the root causes of immigration rather than border enforcement.
Harris also needs to make her case to voters who feel like they don’t know her.
Evelyn Jimenez, 20, of San Antonio, was excited to vote for Biden for the first time in a presidential election and “heartbroken” when he left office, saying she was skeptical of Harris.
“I haven’t really seen her do much in those four years. I didn’t see she was involved,” Jimenez said.
Harris was campaign this year to bolster Latino support by publicizing the administration’s policies and telling NBC News in March that the challenge was “letting people know who brought this to them.”
Maca Casado, media director for Harris’ campaign, said in a statement that Harris has worked to win the support of Latino voters throughout her career and has focused on health care issues, child care and combating gun violence.
“Trump and MAGA proudly espouse an anti-Latino platform that demonizes immigrants that serves only the rich and powerful – and are doing nothing to reach Latino voters,” Casado said. The campaign said it is “aggressively working to make its case because we will not take your votes for granted.”
Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to NBC News: “Latino Americans know Kamala Harris as the original Border Czar, the swing vote that allowed skyrocketing, dangerously liberal inflation. President Trump’s message to our community is simple and builds on his winning record: if you want the return of the strongest economy in over 60 years, rising wages, quality jobs, strong borders and safe neighborhoods, then vote for him.”
Impact of abortion
More Latinas live in states with abortion bans and restrictions than last year; Florida recently enacted a six-week abortion ban. In Texas, where there is a near-total abortion ban, the teen birth rate increased for the first time in 15 years and the average fertility rate increased by 5.1% among Latinas, affecting them disproportionately.
Harris’s outspokenness on abortion could be helped by campaigns in Arizona and Nevada to get measures on abortion rights on the November ballot. Support for abortion rights among Hispanics has increased over the decades, and a majority (62%) believe it should be legal in all or most cases. Harris has sharply attacked Trump and Republicans on the issue of abortion in visits to Arizona and other states.
Abortion has been a thorny issue for Republicans, with some Republican candidates downplaying their anti-abortion views or avoiding discussing them. Trump softened the party platform to exclude a federal ban on abortion.
Gabriela Torres, 29, a high school culinary arts teacher, said she was with her mother and sister outside the U.S. Supreme Court when it overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion nationwide. Her mother was crying and “you could feel the world changing,” she said.
“My mother helped make this happen and now it has been taken away from us. Now I look at my daughter and it’s not just abortion, it’s reproductive rights. It’s the right to get birth control, to have access to safe abortions,” said Torres, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. “My hope is that maybe with a woman in power” those rights can be given back, she said.
Markus Ceniceros, 20, an Arizona school board member who lives in Phoenix and identifies as half white, half Latino, said he has attended rallies where Harris has spoken.
“She knows how to rally a crowd,” he said, “and has been kind of a spokesperson for young voters since last year for the campaign and I think it’s working.”
Young voters, including Latinos, voted in greater numbers in 2020 and the 2022 midterm elections, but lower participation compared to other groups.
With four months to go and with tight races in swing states, the Democratic-leaning political arms of three national Latino groups — Voto Latino, UnidosUS and Mi Familia Vota — said they are combining forces to double down on Latino voter mobilization and registration to support Harris. .
Suzanne Gamboa reported from San Antonio and Nicole Acevedo from New York.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
