Kamala Harris rebounds with Latino voters, poll shows

WASHINGTON —  Vice President Kamala Harris holds a commanding lead with Latino voters over former President Trump, with a margin that tracks closely with President Biden’s 2020 advantage, according to a new national poll of 1,500 Latino voters.

Harris leads 57% to 33% in the National Hispanic Voters Public Opinion Survey conducted by Florida International University in Miami, taken between Oct. 10-22. That’s close to Biden’s 59% to 38% lead over Trump in the 2020 election estimated by the Pew Research Center.

Democrats would be happy with those results after other polls and elections have shown the party slipping with Latino voters in recent years. Biden had only 41% Latino support in a July poll taken shortly after his poor debate performance.

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“This difference is explained by the departure of the President and the arrival of Kamala Harris,” said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at FIU’s Gordon Institute. “President Trump has had very, very stable and consistent support.”

Both candidates have been courting Latino voters heavily, given their growing numbers in key swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Harris taped an interview Friday morning in Las Vegas with Raúl Molinar, host of “El Bueno La Mala y El Feo” (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), a syndicated show streamed on Univision radio.

The poll had a number of notable findings:

• Nearly one in five voters said they would be motivated by an endorsement from Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny, who came out for Harris on Sunday, shortly after the survey was taken. A similar number of respondents said they were motivated by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris.
  
• More than a third of Latino voters said they support stricter border measures and agree with Trump’s message that the most effective control is “a large-scale raid on undocumented immigrants and implement[ing] the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.”
  
• Nearly four in 10 support building a border wall with Mexico and that “undocumented immigrants from Latin America are primarily criminals who threaten U.S. public safety and harm our country.”
  
• The economy is by far the biggest issue influencing Latino voters’ presidential choice (39%), followed by reproductive rights (15%), immigration (12%) and healthcare access and affordability (11%).
  
• Sixty-six percent of Latinos support a ban on abortion with some exceptions after 26 weeks, but support drops to 41% after six weeks.

The findings reveal a “cognitive dissonance,” Gamarra said. “While Latinos are largely identifying with the Democratic Party, at the same time they’re identifying with Republican issues.”