Harris Eyes Latino Voters With Town Hall, Here’s What Polls Show

Vice President Kamala Harris made potentially her biggest push for the Latino vote during a town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday, her first such event since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

The event, hosted by Univision, was focused on questions from undecided Latino voters, and gave Harris the chance to make her case to the key voting bloc less than a month before Election Day. Her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, will participate in a Univision town hall on October 16.

Democrats’ support among Latino voters has been waning in recent years, and polls have shown that Harris is struggling to garner the same support that President Joe Biden gained in 2020. An analysis from Newsweek found that Harris is polling at 56 percent among Latino Americans as of October 5, a 3-point drop from the support Biden had four years ago.

Trump is polling at 38 points, the same support he had from Latino voters in 2020.

Harris on Thursday told the crowd that the 2024 election is “an extraordinary time. This is not a debate about trickle-down economic theory. It’s literally about, do we support a democracy and the Constitution of the United States?”

Latino voters have the chance to play a critical role in swing states in the Southwest. In both Arizona and Nevada, the voting bloc makes up over 20 percent of the state’s electorate. Biden won both states over Trump in 2020.

A recent poll from The New York Times/Siena College showed that Latinos in Arizona were nearly split between the two major candidates—while 49 percent said they support Harris in the race, 41 percent threw their support behind Trump. Polling averages from the Times show Trump is leading Harris by 2 points on average (49 percent to 47 percent) in the Grand Canyon State.

Harris holds a slight edge (49 percent to 48 percent) overall in Nevada, per the Times tracking. A recent poll from USA Today and Suffolk University found that Harris leads Trump among Latino voters 56 percent to 40 percent in Nevada, although the vice president is losing support among Latino men. While 40 percent of Latino men ages 18 to 34 said that they are supporting Harris in November, 53 percent said they are backing Trump. The results were similar for Latino men ages 35 to 49 (53 percent Trump, 39 percent Harris).

Recent polling by UnidosUS, the largest Latino civil rights group in the nation, shows that the top four issues among Latino Americans are “pocketbook issues,” including the cost of living, wages, housing and health care. Immigration and crime tied as the fifth most important issue in the survey, which includes responses from 3,000 eligible Latino voters.

The same survey found that most respondents (45 percent) think Democrats are better at addressing their top issues than Republicans in 2024. But nearly a third of the sample size (28 percent) said neither party is a “champion” of their concerns.

Harris on Thursday was pressed on her immigration policies, an issue that has been a winning topic for Trump throughout the 2024 election cycle. The Times reported that Harris called America’s immigration system “broken,” and called for an “orderly and humane pathway to earned citizenship for hardworking people.”

In the same town hall, however, Harris also expressed support for passing the bipartisan border bill that was struck down by Senate Republicans this year. That bill would increase border agents and boost other methods intended to curb migration over the U.S. southern border. She also touted her experience prosecuting “transnational criminal organizations” as attorney general of California.

When asked about her plans to address concerns over the cost of living, Harris repeated her policy proposals for tackling corporate price gouging, expanding the child tax credit and opening new avenues for first-time homebuyers.

“When you just lift up a little bit of the weight, people thrive and we all benefit,” the vice president said. “And so that’s how I think about the economy.”

Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment Thursday night.