"¿Y que?" Latinos in Arizona and Nevada lean to Harris but want more
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Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), back center, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz order food at Cocina Adamex restaurant in Phoenix. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Latinos in two crucial Western states appear hesitant to go all in for Vice President Harris as she embraces border security measures popular among white swing voters in the Midwest.
Why it matters: Early polls suggest Latinos in Arizona and Nevada — battleground states where immigration raids and racial profiling have been big concerns — are leaning toward Harris over Donald Trump.
- But Harris doesn't appear to have won over enough Latinos to get the boost she'll likely need to win those states. Many Latinos there want Democrats to strike a balance between better border security and respecting the needs of U.S. citizens and legal residents.
The big picture: Latinos make up nearly 20% of the U.S. population, and rising. They account for 24% of the vote in Arizona and 19% in Nevada, and are a key voting bloc that's slowly been drifting from Democrats to Republicans in recent elections.
- A new survey of Hispanic voters in nine battleground states, including Arizona and Nevada, found that Harris is leading Trump 61%-35%, according to TelevisaUnivision Consumer Strategy and Insights.
- A New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters nationwide last week found Harris leading Trump among Hispanic voters, 55-41.
- Both are vast improvements from President Biden's numbers among Latinos before he dropped out of the race in July and was replaced by Harris.
Yes, but: An Axios review of exit polls going back 50 years found that Harris has yet to reach the level of support among Latino voters that Democrats historically have needed to win the White House.
- When Democratic presidential candidates have gotten less than about 64% of the Latino vote, they've typically lost.
The intrigue: Harris' campaign announced Friday that it's adding four strategists — veterans Alida García, Jorge Neri, Nathaly Arriola Maurice and Jess Morales Rocketto — to expand its Latino voter outreach, per The Hill.
- The campaign announced Saturday it will deploy surrogates to Latino events across the country to talk about Harris' vision for Latino communities.
State of play: Axios asked Latino political consultants and organizers who have worked on campaigns in Arizona and Nevada to review various polls and assess what Harris needs to do to increase her Latino support.
- All agreed that targeted TV ads and Spanish-language commercials aren't enough — and that to win on Nov. 5, Harris needs to do as much face-to-face campaigning as possible in the seven weeks before Election Day.
Zoom in: Balancing the need for immigration reform with tighter border security amid increases in asylum seekers is a particularly big concern in Arizona and Nevada, where the voting populations are younger and closer to their families' immigrant roots.
- Many Arizona and Nevada Latinos were terrorized by immigration raids under former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, family separations under former President Trump and deportations under former President Obama
- That's why a border security-only approach may not sway these voters.
Zoom in: A new poll by Third Way/Lake Research Partners, shared exclusively with Axios, suggests Harris has a chance to flip the script on Trump's immigration advantage by striking that balance between
- The survey found that Harris could trim Trump's 13-point advantage on immigration with all voters — and get a boost among Hispanic voters. But she'd have to do more than aggressively tout her record as a border state prosecutor and her support for the bipartisan border security bill Trump killed.
- She'd also have to lay out a vision for reforming the U.S. immigration system, a vexing challenge that Congress hasn't been able to solve.
- "Folks out there saying this is going to turn off Latino voters just couldn't be more dead wrong," Lanae Erickson, Third Way's senior vice president for social policy, education & politics, tells Axios.
What they're saying: "It's a very important Democrats understand is that you are not viewed as the good guys just because you're not Donald Trump," Pablo Rodriguez, executive director of Communities for a New California Education Fund, told Axios.
- "¿Y que? (And?) What else do you got? Our votes have to be earned," added Rodriguez, who has run campaigns in Arizona and Nevada.
- Alex O. Diaz, a Las Vegas consultant, says Harris needs to campaign in the heavily Hispanic, often neglected area of East Las Vegas — not just court undecided voters in the area's mostly white suburbs.
"These polls tell me that Latinos are still getting to know Kamala Harris," said Sisto Abeyta, a political consultant of the Nevada-based TriStrategies firm who is running campaigns in Arizona and Nevada.
- "They like her ... but she has work to do."
