Latino voters were less likely to support Vice President Kamala Harris than they were President Joe Biden in 2020, a critical shift that helped put former President Donald Trump on the path to victory.
More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that was down slightly from the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020, according to AP Votecast.
In 2020, Biden won 64% of Latinos, who made up a significant part of his winning coalition. CNN exit polling revealed Harris was only up by 53% with Latinos, while Trump was winning 45%, more than in recent surveys that showed him winning close to 40% of this critical demographic.
NBC News found Latino men were breaking for Trump by a 10-point margin. Their exit polling found Trump secured 54% of the male Latino vote support, in comparison to Harris’s 44%. Four years ago, Latino men backed Biden over Trump 59% to 36%.
Harris was underperforming Biden with Latino women. The network found Harris had a 25-point advantage with Latino women, down from Biden’s 39-point lead in 2020.
NBC News also found that other Republicans made inroads with Latino voters. Their exit polls found that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won Latino voters by 6 points. In 2018, Cruz lost Latino voters by 29 points.
Trump’s appeal to Latino men is largely economic, based on lowering inflation, building opportunities, and returning to better policies for their wallets. He has bashed open borders, arguing illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs and taxpayer dollars.
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“The other underlying problem is that Democrats just broadly have a problem with working-class voters,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican operative, speaking to the Washington Examiner in mid-September. “Latinos have become the largest part of the working class nationally, so they’re gonna have problems with Latinos.”
The AP Votecast exit polling also found about 8 in 10 Black voters supported Harris, down from the roughly 9 in 10 who backed Biden.