There Is a Latino Vote Reset for the 2024 Election

A memo with toplines released Wednesday by Equis Research about the 2024 presidential race concludes that “the election suggests a reset in the fight over Latino voters. The Hispanic electorate now looks more in line with the other Trump-era elections of 2020 and 2022 than with a wide partisan realignment.”

The Equis work focused on a July 22-August 4 survey of 2,183 registered Latino voters across 12 states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin). Of those 2,183 respondents, 1,242 came from seven battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). It also included data from a May 16-June 6 survey of 2,600 registered Latino voters, of which 1,477 came from the seven battleground states.

According to the memo, here are some key takeaways:

• Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump 56-37 (+19) among registered Hispanic voters in the seven most competitive states (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin).

• In a previous wave of polling, fielded May 16-June 6, before the fateful Trump/Biden debate, Biden led by a much slimmer margin, 46-41 (+5).

• Harris' support among Latinos under 40 is 17 points higher than Biden's was. She is at 60% with the young Hispanics, compared to Biden's 43%.

• Her 59% support among Latina women is up from 50% for Biden in early June. Among men, she saw a similarly sized bump, moving her from 41% to 51%.

• While liberals have moved the most, with Harris doing 16 points better with them than Biden was, she is also doing 12 points better among moderate Latinos and 7 points better among conservative Latinos.

“Out the gate, the vice president has quickly amassed the support of a wide swath of discontented Hispanic voters, and she still has running room,” the memo said. “What those last Latino voters do could determine the overall result in hotly contested states.”‍

What It All May Mean

On Wednesday morning, I spoke with Carlos Odio, the memo’s co-author along with Maria Di Franco Quiñonez, about the findings. Odio is a former Obama White House staffer and was the Deputy Latino Vote Director for the 2008 Obama campaign. He is currently the co-founder of EquisLabs.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Is this a historic swing, in your estimation? Why? Why not?

Carlos Odio: I don't think there's any equivalent to what we are going through. So it's hard to answer the question in the sense that we haven't had a switch in a candidate this late in the contest in recent times, especially during the “Latino vote era.” The honest answer is that there is nothing to which to compare this.

JRV:  I have been reading national media stories about previous Latino exit polls that say Democrats need mid-60% Latino support because that's the history of the Latino vote over several cycles. I read it at Axios and also at Politico this week. I have been referring to a 2021 Pew Research analysis of validated voters showing that Biden won the national Latino vote 59-38 over Trump. What do you think about that mid-60% analysis, specifically for 2024? Is that even the right analysis to make?

CO: It is an incredibly irresponsible analysis.

First of all, if you depend on exit polls alone for your analysis, then you are getting a very noisy read of the Latino electorate.

Second, we're ignoring the great difference, the churn in the electorate that happens between elections. As a reminder, less than 30% of registered Latinos today voted in the 2008 election. So, a lot of our current frameworks for assessing the Latino vote are based on the Obama era. The electorate has changed since then.

But the larger point is that elections are about winning coalitions, and there is no magic number you need for any one part of that coalition. It's much more dynamic. You are constantly trading votes with the other side.

These contests are decided at a state level and there is increasingly a difference between the most competitive states and the least competitive ones. Also, Latino voters do not exist in a vacuum. The influence of Latino voters also depends on the other dynamics in a given state. And so if white support for Harris is higher in a given place, then you don't need as much Latino voting support.

On the flip side, if white support has dropped in a given state, you will need more Latino support. Also, of course, there's the dynamics of turnout. Latinos are a growing electorate. As they grow, you can have some changes in support levels and still net out the same raw contribution for a candidate.

JRV: To me, Latino voters are still a relatively new vote. You're refreshing the Latino community with new votes. Because you can say that you can have all these exit poll numbers and history, but then it's a 2024 turnout game that could throw all those exit poll numbers out the window. Is that correct, in your opinion?

CO: That's why the Electoral College decides elections. The map changes.

There are years when candidates need Arizona, and there are years when they don't. There are years when the Latino vote in Wisconsin is so narrow that it could decide the outcome. I think we're in one of those years now.

And so we are not just thinking about Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada now, but also the impact in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

History at a national level from noisy exit polls from the 1960s or whenever is not the best way to get a sense of what Kamala Harris or Donald Trump needs to do in 2024.

JRV: Looking at this nationally as opposed to looking at this now as swing states, we can now say that Latino votes in swing states play a difference. That is, we should look more at swing states than national Latino tallies from 2004, 2008, 2012 or 2016. What are your thoughts about that?

CO: I'll say there was an interesting dynamic in 2020 because of all the differences that we know exist among Hispanic voters.

A lot of the movement in 2020 seemed to cut across the normal line of division. So what people who were moving had in common was that they identified as Latino—there was something common to the identity. Now, in 2022, a difference opens up in the midterms between the states that were highly contested and those that weren't.

And so we know that when the parties fight over the vote, you will get different numbers than when they don't. And that has become more important in the last couple of years. And that's why the big difference, just to say it out loud, is between Florida and the other states. There are differences that opened up, especially in the 2022 midterm election, and we'll have to see whether that bears out in 2024.

What We’re Reading Today

Brock Pierce in NYTimes: The controversial crypto dude who promised to turn Puerto Rico into a “Puertotopia” was featured Tuesday in The New York Times. The story, to say the least, is “complicated.” Here is one excerpt from the piece: “Mr. Pierce has also voiced concerns about his safety in Puerto Rico. Privately, he has discussed a plan to build a munitions repository in Vieques — a store of weapons that he said would offer a measure of protection if the locals ever rose up against him, according to two people who heard the comments.”

You can read the complete story (gift article) below.

Up North: Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News was on Canadian TV to talk about his latest CBS News story, which said that the United States “is planning to speed up the processing of asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Canada border in response to an unprecedented increase in migrant crossings there.”

Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder and interim publisher of The Latino Newsletter.