Two months before the election, Latino Georgians say they support Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump by a 31-point margin, 60% to 29%, with 11% undecided or supporting a third-party candidate, according to a new poll released by UnidosUS and BSP Research.
But in a race that could come down to a few thousand votes, turning support into ballots is vital, and a narrow majority of Latino voters in the state say they haven’t heard anything from either party about registering or voting, the poll found.
In total, 51% of respondents said they had not been contacted by anyone, 23% said they had been contacted by Democrats, 17% by Republicans, 17% by a non-partisan organization and 10% had been contacted about a specific ballot measure.
“This is, I think, a wakeup call for both parties to reach out into the Latino community. There’s still not a lot of education out there on why Latinos should be voting for one party or the other,” said BSP senior analyst Stephen Nuño-Perez.
“While the majority of Latinos in Georgia plan to vote, many have not made a commitment to do so,” he added. “So parties and campaigns should not miss the opportunity to engage with this electorate. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Latino community, especially in statewide elections.”
Latinos are expected to cast about 200,000 ballots in Georgia, making up about 4% of the vote, Nuño-Perez said, representing a 20% increase since 2016.
In 2024, 22% of Latinos in Georgia will be voting in their first presidential election, the pollsters said, while 20% voted in 2020 for the first time, which means 42% of Georgia’s Latino electorate is new since Trump’s 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Candidates should be redoubling their efforts to engage this decisive electorate and present concrete solutions to their top concerns — cost of living, wages and housing — to gain their confidence and earn their votes,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the UnidosUS Latino Vote Initiative.
Pocketbook issues were at the top of mind for the 300 eligible Georgia Latino voters surveyed as part of a nationwide survey of 3,000 eligible Latino voters. When asked to name their top three issues, 54 voters said inflation or rising cost of living, 37 said jobs or the economy and 30 named housing or rent costs. Rounding out the top five were immigration and border security with 25 naming that as a top issue and health care, which was part of 24 responses.
“What we see in this poll is reflected in our conversations in the community,” said Irving Zavaleta, national programs manager for Mi Familia Vota. “Latinos are frustrated and focused on the cost of living, food and necessities. We also are hearing from our community that reproductive rights and immigration remain potent areas of interest for Latino voters.”
Only 18 respondents listed abortion as a top issue, putting it as No. 7 overall, but the respondents nearly all came down on the same side of that issue. In all, 73% said they strongly or somewhat agreed that it is wrong to make abortion illegal, regardless of their own beliefs. Similar percentages agreed across gender, age, partisan and religious lines, with non-Democrat respondents the least likely to agree at 61%.
When it comes to immigration and the border, most of those polled said the top priorities should be providing paths to citizenship for DACA recipients and undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long time and protecting them from deportation, as well as cracking down on border-crossing human smugglers and drug traffickers.
Increasing border security, finishing the border wall and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants were all less popular.
This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.
