Kamala Harris may not have enough Latino support to win the White House

Vice President Kamala Harris is addressing the Democratic National Convention — and the country — on Thursday as she wraps up the four-day celebration in Chicago.

She is attempting to define herself and her vision to the country in this truncated campaign. It’s only been just a month since her campaign even started. In that time, trends in national polls have completely changed, showing Harris with the lead that former President Donald Trump once held.

That’s also true among a growing and key demographic in American elections: Latino voters.

But Russell Contreras found Harris has not yet reached the level of support among Latinos that Democrats have historically needed to win the White House.

Contreras is justice and race reporter for Axios.

Conversation highlights

You reviewed exit polls going back 50 years to find out: When Democratic presidential candidates win, how much they win by with Latino voters? What did you find? What's the threshold?

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yeah. Going all the way back to Jimmy Carter in 1976, what we found is that when a Democratic presidential candidate gets below 65%, 61% they tend to lose. This is because this demographic in key states can push you over the edge. When you looked at Jimmy Carter, for example, he won around ... 76% of the Latino vote. And then when he ran in 1980 ... he won only about 55%. So a big drop in Latino support. And, of course, Ronald Reagan won in 1980.

When you look at, say John Kerry in ... 2004, he got ... 53% of the Latino vote and lost to George Bush in a close race.

So when a Democratic presidential candidate gets under 65%, it's usually bad news for them.

So where does Harris stand now?

CONTRERAS: Well, there's been a surge right now. The, when Biden was running, there was concern among Democrats that Latinos just weren't engaged. The Democrats were not given any kind of enthusiastic push in this community. And since Harris entered the race, we've seen a surge in interest. Biden was polling in the 40s. It was very, it was bad news. Now, Harris has surged in the 50s. That's great news for them. They think it's going in the right direction, but it's not reached that threshold. They want, they need the magic number to be to be about 66% or higher.

And increasingly this voting bloc is getting stronger and stronger. It's growing. So in 1976, it was small ... it was tiny. Now, it's huge and could be surpassing Black voters very soon.

Talk a little bit more about that and how essential the Latino vote is to any candidate winning today. This is especially important in states like Arizona, but really nationwide.

CONTRERAS: That's right. We tend to look at the vote where it's significant in terms of population in Texas and California. Those have been historically safe, red and blue states. New Mexico, too. But where this vote can really make a difference is in places like you mentioned, Arizona and Nevada and Georgia. There's a growing number of votes there, Latino voters are growing there, especially Mexican immigrants.

Why is that important? Yes, it's small. But that election is gonna be so close that that population has a key in swinging this state election. They're also important in Michigan. We tend to overlook the population in Michigan, and there's a growing population in the Midwest. Even in states like Nebraska, they could be in play because of Tim Walz's addition to the ticket, these areas could really decide the electoral college results.

And as this population grows, their importance also grows, and they're gonna be bringing up new issues. It's not just getting them out to vote, but it's also engaging them and telling the politicians: "Hey, look, you may be talking about climate change enough with the EVs. I'm talking about clean water. That's my focus."

The GOP has seen the border and immigration as a weakness for Kamala Harris. How much does immigration matter to Latino voters? Is that their top issue?

CONTRERAS: You know, we did a recent Axios vibes poll with Harris, and we found that I, you know, immigration among Latinos ... it ranks like number seven or eight. Overall, they're more concerned about jobs, inflation. In fact, the top three issues that we poll them all: inflation, housing affordability, jobs and wages — those are the top three. Border security is like number eight, and the pathway to citizenship was the last, only 5% ... 47% were concerned about inflation. Only about 19% were about securing the border.

So go on the border, actually, Trump is not necessarily appealing to Latino voters. He's appealing to white voters in the Midwest where border or border security is more of an issue to them on the border. Not so much, especially because migration has slowed to a crawl.