Harris has to recapture the young Latino voters Biden was losing

SAN ANTONIO — Rebecca Contreras was planning to vote again for President Joe Biden, but the 30-year-old Texan was uncertain he could win. Now with Vice President Kamala Harris as the de facto nominee, she said her confidence has crept back.

“Maybe there’s some hope again, and our votes can matter,” the San Antonio social media marketing specialist, who considers herself progressive, said Monday.

Long seen as reliable Democratic voters, the support of younger Latinos like Contreras was less of a sure bet for Democrats this year than in previous election cycles.

Democrats saw then-President Donald Trump and the Republican Party carve out a larger share of the Hispanic vote in 2020. This year, polls showed a continued decline for Biden, with the two presidential candidates essentially tied among Latinos; the party has also feared losing more Latino supporters to third-party candidates or to voters staying home altogether.

Latinos are younger than Americans overall, and hundreds of thousands of Latino citizens turn 18 and are eligible to vote each year. A May survey of over 2,000 voters under 40, including Latinos, found only one-third would vote for Biden. Among Latinos, 32% said they would support Trump, 28% chose Biden and another 28% said they would support “someone else,” the University of Chicago GenForward survey found.

Young Latino college students in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania told NBC News in April that while most supported progressive policies that aligned with the Democratic agenda, few expressed support for Biden or Trump.

One of every 5 Hispanics will be voting in their first presidential election this year, according to UnidosUS, a national Latino advocacy group. Of those new Latino voters, more than a third (36%) identify as independent or nonpartisan.

Vice President Kamala Harris holds a meeting with Latina state legislators to discuss fortifying and protecting reproductive rights in their states.Saul Loeb / AFP – Getty Images file

They are not so easily won over.

Dennison Pinto, 19, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, had been exploring voting for a third-party candidate. On Monday, Pinto said he prefers a Democratic president, but he’s not yet sold on Harris or any other specific candidate.

Fellow Allentown resident Jeremy Bautista, 20, cast his first vote in a local Pennsylvania election last year. He’s still mulling whether to vote this year. While Bautista said Harris is starting to look like “one of the better options,” he’s unsure whether she lines up with his views on economic policy and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Young voters had “a general sense of both parties are the same, nothing’s going to change,” Stella Rouse, an Arizona State University political scientist, told NBC News in April. This week, she said Harris can invigorate young Latinos if she conveys “a message of opportunity” and paints a picture of a future America that is multicultural and where young Latinos can take a lead.

Room for support?

Poder NC Action, a progressive group focused on mobilizing North Carolina Latinos, said in a statement that younger voters weren’t confident that they would be represented by any presidential candidate or political party. After Biden stepped down, “we are more optimistic than ever,” said founder Irene Godinez, 41. “While we don’t align 100% with VP Harris, we support the choice of a new candidate who will bring a renewed spirit to the fight of our lives.”

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic firm that polls Latinos, said in a post on X on Monday that an early read of data from a July 11-15 poll of Nevada Latinos shows Harris winning back some Latinos who had slipped away from Biden “and notably pulls a chunk who said they would sit out a Biden/Trump rematch.”

His firm’s past polling has shown Harris with favorable and unfavorable ratings similar to Biden’s but doing significantly better with Latinas, including those younger than 40, a key swing group.

In-house Biden campaign polling conducted by Democratic pollster Matt Barreto shows that Harris is more popular than Biden among Latino voters.

Harris had a net 46-point advantage over Biden among Latinos who said they disapprove of Biden and his GOP rival, Trump, according to the polling detailed in a July 14 memo Barreto and fellow Biden pollster Angie Gutierrez posted online.

Harris’ popularity with Latinos ages 18-29 is 16 points better than Biden’s, he said. The Hill first reported the memo. Barreto said the polling was done before Biden stepped down to determine if Harris could bolster Biden’s campaign with Latinos.

Barreto said Harris won the Latino vote in California when she ran for attorney general in 2010 and 2014 and beat Rep. Loretta Sanchez for the Senate seat in 2016.

“She has an opportunity to reverse the media narrative that Democrats are losing Latino support because she seems to be quite popular with Latinos, and as Latinos learn more about her, I expect her favorability ratings will go up,” Barreto told NBC News on Tuesday.

Harris faces voter frustrations — as well as Republican attacks — over the high cost of living, which Latinos repeatedly name as their top concern in polling, as well as immigration. Republicans have erroneously called her the border czar, though her work focused on working with Central American countries on the root causes of immigration, not on border enforcement.

Harris also has to make her case to voters who feel they don’t know her.

Evelyn Jimenez, 20, of San Antonio was excited to cast her first vote in a presidential election for Biden and “heartbroken” when he stepped down, saying she was skeptical of Harris.

“I really didn’t see her do much in these four years. I didn’t see that she was involved,” Jimenez said.

Harris has been campaigning this year to shore up Latino support, touting the administration’s policies and telling NBC News in March the challenge was “to let people know who brought it to them.”

Maca Casado, Harris campaign media director, said in a statement that Harris has worked to earn Latino voter support throughout her career and focused on issues of health care, child care and fighting gun violence.

“Trump and MAGA are proudly running on an anti-Latino platform demonizing immigrants that only serves the wealthy and powerful — and are doing nothing to reach Latino voters,” Casado said. The campaign said it is “working aggressively to make the case because we won’t take their votes for granted.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to NBC News, “Latino-Americans know Kamala Harris as the original Border Czar, the deciding vote that let to sky-rocketing inflation, and dangerously liberal. President Trump’s message to our community is simple and built on his winning record: If you want the return of the strongest economy in over 60 years, rising wages, quality jobs, strong borders, and safe neighborhoods, then vote for him.”

Abortion’s impact

More Latinas live in states with abortion bans and restrictions than last year; Florida recently enacted a six-week abortion ban. In Texas, where there is a near-total abortion ban, the teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years and the average fertility rate rose 5.1% among Latinas, disproportionately affecting them.

Harris’ outspokenness on abortion could be helped by campaigns in Arizona and Nevada to get abortion rights measures on November ballots. Support for abortion rights among Hispanics has been increasing over the decades, and a majority (62%) believe it should be legal in all or most cases. Harris has hit Trump and Republicans hard on abortion in visits to Arizona and other states.

Abortion has been a thorny issue for Republicans, with some GOP candidates downplaying their anti-abortion views or avoiding discussing them. Trump softened the party’s platform to exclude a federal abortion ban.

Gabriela Torres, 29, a high school culinary arts teacher, said she was with her mom and sister outside the U.S. Supreme Court when it overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion nationwide. Her mother was in tears and “you could feel the world shift,” she said.

“My mom helped make this happen and now it’s taken away from us. Now I look at my daughter and it’s not just abortion, it’s reproductive rights. It’s the right to get birth control, to have access to safe abortions,” said Torres, who caucused for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “My hope is that maybe with a female in power” those rights can be returned, she said.

Markus Ceniceros, 20, a school board member in Arizona who lives in Phoenix and identifies as half white, half Latino, said he attended rallies where Harris spoke.

“She knows how to rally a crowd,” he said, “and she’s kind of been the spokesman for young voters since last year for the campaign and I think it’s working.”

Young voters, including Latinos, voted in higher numbers in 2020 and in the 2022 midterms, but have lower turnout compared to other groups.

With four months to go and with tight races in battleground states, the Democratic-leaning political arms of three national Latino groups — Voto Latino, UnidosUS and Mi Familia Vota — said they are combining forces to double down on mobilization and registration of Latino voters to support Harris.

Suzanne Gamboa reported from San Antonio and Nicole Acevedo from New York.

For more from NBC Latino, sign up for our weekly newsletter.