Latino Voters Unclaimed
Latino Voters Remain a Swing Demographic, Challenging Both Political Parties to Connect
Latino voters could decide the 2024 presidential election — and right now, neither party has locked them down. An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020, according to Pew Research Center. Biden's lead over Trump among this group has shrunk from 29 points in 2020 to just 9 points in 2024, per an Axios/Ipsos poll from April.
The top concern driving this shift is not immigration — it's money. A UnidosUS poll found that 52% of Latino voters rank inflation and the economy as their number one issue. Both campaigns are scrambling to respond, but focus groups suggest voters feel neither candidate has offered a real plan to lower grocery prices.
How Trump Erased a 20-Point Democratic Advantage
In 2020, Biden won Latino voters by more than 20 points. That edge is nearly gone. A New York Times/Siena College poll from May 2024 showed Biden and Trump essentially tied among Latino voters across six key battleground states. It is one of the biggest demographic shifts of this election cycle.
Much of Trump's gain comes from Latino men. A Wall Street Journal poll found Trump performing significantly better with that group, while Biden holds a double-digit lead with Latina women. Researcher Carlos Odio of Equis Research notes that many of Trump's new Latino supporters are "low-propensity voters" — people who rarely vote but are drawn to Trump's image of economic strength.
Both Campaigns Spend Big but Miss the Mark
The Biden-Harris campaign launched "Latinos con Biden-Harris" in Phoenix in March and committed $30 million to ads in Spanish, Spanglish, and English, according to NBC News. Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the first Latina to run a major presidential campaign, said the team is "not taking a single Latino vote for granted."
On the Republican side, senior advisor Danielle Alvarez is pushing a message built around entrepreneurship and school choice. But the GOP's ground game has faced questions after The New York Times reported that several "Hispanic Community Centers" set up during the 2022 cycle were shut down following the RNC's April restructuring.
Colorado's 8th District Becomes the Latino Battleground Test Case
Both parties see Colorado's 8th Congressional District as a proving ground for Latino outreach. The National Republican Congressional Committee has flagged it as a top target. The district is majority-Hispanic and has swung between parties, making it a real-time test of which message — economic anxiety or cultural alignment — lands better.
Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS, warns that both parties are still "under-investing" and failing to address what she calls the "moveable middle" — persuadable Latino voters whose concerns are concrete and economic. Voto Latino has committed $44 million to register and mobilize Latino voters, with president Maria Teresa Kumar arguing that "Latinas remain the firewall for the Democratic party," per MSNBC.
A "De-Alignment" That Could Reshape Electoral Maps for Years
GOP strategist Mike Madrid argues Latinos are not "shifting right" so much as "de-aligning" from a Democratic Party he says focused too much on identity politics and not enough on working-class economic mobility. Pew Research Center frames the trend as "normalization" — as Latinos move into the middle class, their votes are splitting more like other working-class groups did decades ago.
The stakes are high on the map. Nevada and Arizona — states with large Latino populations — are now much harder for Biden to hold. Florida, where Trump made massive gains in Miami-Dade County in 2020, may be slipping out of Democratic reach entirely. The Los Angeles Times reports campaigns are also shifting their ad strategy away from formal Spanish toward regional dialects and Spanglish to reach third-generation Latinos.
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