In 2016, immigration became a top policy priority for Latinos because of Trump’s anti-Mexican immigrant rhetoric and campaign. Throughout the campaign, Trump did not miss an opportunity to attack undocumented immigrants, Mexico, and our so-called open borders. On Election Day, Latino voters did not forget his scathing words: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have a lot of problems…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…” Unsurprisingly, Trump lost a significant share of the Latino vote.
In 2024, Trump is recycling his old campaign playbook, once again emphasizing the threat of “illegal immigration” and our open borders. At a campaign rally in New Hampshire, he claimed undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” During his debate with Kamala Harris, Trump pushed a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets. As president, he is promising to launch the “largest domestic deportation in American history.”
How are Latino voters reacting to Trump’s renewed attacks? Are immigration issues as important to them in 2024 as they were in 2016? Is Trump on the verge of losing a significant share of Latino voters because of his attacks on immigration?
To assess Latino issue priorities and their intended vote, I will analyze data from the 2024 Entravision/AltaMed Latino weekly tracking poll.* Each week leading up to the election, Latino voters will be asked to list the most important issues facing the United States that our elected officials should address. The poll also asks Latinos who they plan to vote for president in the election. The results here are based on two weeks of polling data.
The top three issues for Latino voters in 2024 are cost of living and inflation, jobs and the economy, and housing costs and affordability. Economic concerns also rank highly across other segments of the electorate. Although U.S. economic fundamentals are solid, the fact remains that soaring home prices are locking millions of Americans out of the American dream of homeownership. Add to this concern the high cost of goods and services, and most Americans believe the economy and their own financial situation are in dire straits.
Non-economic issues are also important to Latinos, with reproductive rights ranking fourth followed by gun violence. Tied for sixth place are health care costs and immigration reform for immigrants already here. Thus, immigration reform has dropped six places since 2016.
This declining salience does not mean that immigration issues are unimportant. They are very important for Latino households where one or more members are undocumented, and immigration remains the third most important issue for foreign-born Latinos. In a separate question, 75% support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who live and work in the United States. Nonetheless, immigration does not have the same urgency among Latinos broadly as it did in 2016 when Trump made his debut. What this means for 2024 is that the economic issues will largely drive Latino vote choice.
Turning to Latinos intended vote choice, we see that Harris’ support has gone up from 55% to 56%, while the intended vote for Trump remains at 33%, a difference of 23 points. These numbers look good, but they are not great compared to 2020 polling. The 2020 American Election Eve Poll showed 70% of Latinos intended to vote for Biden compared to 27% for Trump, a difference of 43 points. The vote intention numbers will change as we get closer to Election Day. Nonetheless, what is evident from our polling data is that Trump is doing much better among Latinos in 2024 than in previous years.
Latino voters have long been associated with immigration issues. In the contemporary period, that association may have started in the mid-1990s with Proposition 187 in California. There is a wealth of evidence that Latinos in the state mobilized and turned out in record numbers to defeat Republicans who championed the initiative. California is now a solidly blue state because Republicans in essence kicked the Latino hornets’ nest. In the 2016 election, Latinos nationally reacted in a similar manner to Trump’s campaign. Yet, in 2024, despite Trump’s continued attack on immigration, Latino priorities have shifted. It also appears as though Donald Trump is on the cusp of winning a significant share of the Latino vote.
What’s changed? While it is difficult to list all of the factors underlying Latino issue preferences and vote choice, there are three related to immigration that are worth noting.
First, the share of Latinos who are immigrants or foreign-born has fallen over time. Presently, about seven in ten Latinos are born in the United States. Second, authorized and unauthorized immigration from Mexico has been steadily dropping for some time and is being replaced by immigrants from other countries. Third, while Trump is still focused on the broken U.S.-Mexico border, his attacks against immigrants are no longer solely directed to those from Mexico. The separation of Mexican Americans and other Latinos from the immigrant experience and Trump’s attacks on non-Mexican immigrants are leading Hispanics to turn their attention to other issues. In 2024, it’s the economy, inflation, and jobs.
Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric is no longer having the same effect on Latino voters as it did back in 2016. It is too early to tell whether we are witnessing the beginning of a shift in Latino political attitudes and behaviors in which immigration issues no longer have the same weight as in years past. What is certain is that Latinos are not single-issue voters, and both candidates will have to adjust their campaigns to this reality.
*Methodology. Fieldwork was overseen by BSP Research, LLC based in Woodland Hils, CA. For the first week, 500 respondents were interviewed from across the United States, in English or Spanish at respondent discretion, with a margin of error of +/- 4.4%. Online panels were from 8 leading national panel vendors who verify panelist identity and can match to the voter file, and consist of a combination of randomly recruited and opt-in panel vendors. Universe of analysis consisted of 50-state national Latino registered voter population. Within the sample frame, respondents were selected at random with quotas established for age, gender, education, and nativity. Within each quota all sample was randomly recruited, and quota were staged to ensure that quotas did not “fill up” and affect other quotas. Instead, quotas were staged and updated each day to allow for full random recruitment both within and across quota layers. Post-stratification weights were employed to match the final sample, nationally, to the best known estimates from the U.S. Census and voter files for age, education, gender, nativity and partisanship for each sample.