Axios Vibes: Dems close enthusiasm gap among Latinos

• Those voting blocs of Latinos appear especially motivated by having a new alternative to former President Trump.
• "It's back to a wide-open race," said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, which is not affiliated with the vice president.
• "With Latinos, we were seeing this pronounced shift in enthusiasm toward Trump and a populist message. Now, this is a new race. It's a reset."

The big picture: 83% of registered Latino Democratic voters and 84% of Latino Republican voters now say they're extremely likely to vote. In last month's survey, only 71% of Latino Democrats felt that way, compared with 86% of Latino Republicans.

• 63% of Latino voters in both major parties now say they're enthusiastic to vote. That closes last month's 16-point gap of 40% for Democrats and 56% for Republicans.

Asked how their views have changed in the past few weeks, 73% of Latino voters (and 67% of non-Latino voters) said they're more hopeful for the country's future, while 60% of Latino voters (and 53% of non-Latino voters) said they feel reinvigorated by politics.

• 79% of millennial Latino voters now say they're extremely likely to vote — a jump of 16 percentage points from July. Gen Z and women voters showed smaller increases.
• Not feeling the campaign's new energy quite as much: independent Latino voters. Just 52% said they're extremely likely to vote.

The intrigue: Perceptions on personal finances also bear watching: 48% of Latino voters in this survey described their own economic situation as good, 4 percentage points higher than in our July survey.

• Housing affordability and wages are outsized issues for Latino voters compared with non-Latino voters.
• The survey backs up what Latino voters in two crucial Central California U.S. House Districts told Axios last month: They want candidates to discuss housing and cost of living in one of the nation's poorest regions.
• Vice President Harris has proposed helping first-time home buyers cover $25,000 toward the purchase of a home.

By the numbers: Inflation is still the top issue for Latino voters across party lines, followed by housing prices, jobs and wages, and crime and safety.

• Securing the border is a top concern for Latino Republicans, while abortion rights rank high among Latino Democrats and independents.
• About half of Latino voters see Harris as preferable to President Biden on a wide range of issues, including providing a vision for the future, fighting for the working class, abortion rights, union rights, controlling inflation, border security and the Israel-Gaza conflict.

• Latino voters also give Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the edge over Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, on issues such as authenticity, relatability and strategic value.

Zoom in: 11% of Latino voters surveyed said they had registered to vote only in recent weeks.

What they're saying: "With Biden's age out of the way, Latino voters are saying finally we can talk about the issues that really matter," Gerzema said. "Those issues are first and foremost economics."

• "As [Harris] seeks to define herself now on these issues with Latinos, she's relatively unencumbered with the Biden baggage. I think they're giving her a blank slate to define herself, a bit of a blank check to say, 'Come and talk to us and tell us how you're going to go after these issues.' "

Methodology: The findings in this Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll are based on a nationally representative sample of 3,604 U.S. adults conducted online from August 9-13, where 575 identified as Latino and 459 as Latino voters.

• The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the data for the overall population is accurate to within +/- 1.9 percentage points using a 95% confidence level.
• The data for Latino voters is accurate to within +/- 5.5 percentage points.

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