Poll: Latinos Move to Biden After Harris VP Pick

Amid the pandemic, Latinos say they are still informed about what’s going on in the elections, a new poll shows.

In a new poll conducted just this week, a majority of Latinos say they are voting for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. An estimated 66% of Latinos say they will vote for Biden, an increase of 5% points since May.  

The poll, conducted by UnidosUS, a national Latino advocacy group, and SOMOS Community Care, Aug. 7-15, included 1,842 randomly selected Latino adults in Spanish. The Latinos polled lived in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The figures revealed how Latinos feel about the upcoming election and six months into the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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For example, 70% of Latinos say President Donald Trump did a poor job handling the the coronavirus. Another 47% say that the most important issue going into the election is the response to COVID-19. 

As far as the election is concerned, Latinos are staying abreast of the political ongoings of both Biden and Trump amid the pandemic. The poll shows that 74% of Latinos are closely following the news about the presidential election. 

A similar poll conducted by the Voter Participation Center, administered by the African American Research Collaborative (AARC) and Latino Decisions, revealed Biden’s recent announcement of Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate gave him a good boost among Latinos and Blacks. 

After the vice president announcement, 65% of Latinos said they would support Biden, while 17% said they would support Trump. Previously, 59% of Latinos said they would vote or were leaning toward Biden, compared with 26% who said they would vote for Trump.

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“Looking at the sample, it is balanced before and after the Harris announcement—there are not more Democrats interviewed after, there are not more young people. The data are similar before and after,” Matt Barreto, founder of Latino Decisions, told The Hill. “The only change is that Sen. Harris was named to the ticket, and the data finds large movement towards Biden, well outside the margin of error, among both Blacks and Latinos.”

“This is real movement, this is not a statistical anomaly,” Barreto added.

In more encouraging news, Voto Latino, the nation’s largest Latinx voter registration organization, announced another milestone toward its goal to register voters for the 2020 presidential election. 

Voto Latino has officially registered 254,528 voters for the 2020 election cycle—surpassing the halfway mark for its 500,000 registration goal. This milestone brings the organization’s registration total to more than 750,000 voters and represents the most voters registered in an election cycle in its 15-year history. Of those registered for the 2020 election, 70% are between the ages of 18 and 34, and 146,983 people have registered in Texas alone.