Up-for-grabs Latino voters signal 2024 fight ahead for Democrats

By Alicia Diaz, Bloomberg News

A wavering group of Latino voters is up for grabs as the 2024 election nears, signaling a warning flare for the Democratic Party.

Latinos, especially first-time voters, have been loosening their traditional ties to Democrats, even though polls suggest that doesn’t automatically translate into Republican gains. As a tight presidential race in 2024 and another close battle for control of Congress look likely, Latino voters — one of the fastest-growing blocs at over 34 million — are increasingly viewed as a potentially decisive group.

“The Latino vote is probably the most persuadable universe of voters in the 2024 election,” said Chuck Rocha, senior Democratic strategist and president of political consulting firm Solidarity Strategies.

Polls suggest many undecided Latino voters view both parties as falling flat in delivering on key values such as the economy and crime. And their often relatively short lineage in the US means political allegiances are more fluid, Rocha said.

“The parties have been very transactional,” said Hector Sanchez Barba, CEO of civic engagement group Mi Familia Vota. “They just come the year of the election, especially in the swing states. We know that this requires long term investment, so it’s an opportunity for both parties.”

Those battleground states include Arizona and Nevada, both of which have significant Latino populations.

About a third of Latinos identify as Democrats compared to less than 20% as Republicans, according to an Ipsos poll. Even those Republican ties are somewhat shaky, according to Pew Research.

But Pew also found that Latino support for Democratic candidates dropped to a 21 percentage-point margin in the 2022 US midterms from a 47-point margin in 2018, mostly due to changes in turnout among Latino Republicans.

“The ties of the Latino community to the Democratic Party are relatively weak compared to what you see with the Black community or urban, highly educated whites,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice president of Ipsos.

Yet GOP efforts to deepen inroads face challenges such as the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. That includes the court’s rejection of President Joe Biden’s proposal to forgive student loan debt, which was popular among young Black and Latino Americans. Last year’s Supreme Court decision striking down the constitutional right to an abortion also resonated for Latinos.

While Latino voter turnout increased in 2020 by more than 30% from the 2016 election, a majority of them voted for Biden in key swing states, though former president Donald Trump gained in southern Florida, according to a report by the University of California Los Angeles.

Latinos from all backgrounds, but particularly Mexican Americans, tend to care more about kitchen-table issues like the economy and crime and less about culture-war rhetoric promoted by leading GOP candidates, Ipsos’ Jackson said.

“The party that is able to start building a lasting relationship with the emerging Latino vote is going to be the party that articulates an aspirational working-class agenda,” said Republican political consultant Mike Madrid.

Outreach woes

Both Biden and Trump stepped up their reach toward Latino voters ahead of the 2020 election, though the Biden campaign outspent Trump roughly two-to-one on Spanish-language ads. Combined, their parties invested over $20 million on Spanish-language television ads.

Still, that’s a small fraction of the roughly $1 billion in ad spending on the 2020 presidential election in just 13 key states, according to an NPR analysis. Coupled with a broader trend among younger, undecided voters to stray from cable news, a similar strategy for 2024 may overlook a critical mass of Latino voters with campaign pitches.