Donald Trump spends most of his time campaigning before rapturous white voters, who are the base of his Maga movement. But on Wednesday, with only weeks left in the election, he was in an unfamiliar setting, trying to woo undecided Hispanic voters at a town hall. Until recently, this constituency was loyally Democratic, but this year sizeable numbers of Hispanic voters are either supporting Trump or are on the fence. That’s causing deep concern inside the Democratic party.
There are similar worries about Black voters. When Barack Obama hit the campaign trail for Kamala Harris this week, he chided Black men for not fully embracing her candidacy. “I'm speaking to men directly,” Obama said at his campaign event. “You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses... It makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”
Most Hispanic and Black voters do support Harris—according to the New York Times/Siena polls in October, she is ahead 78 per cent to 15 per cent among Black voters, and she’s leading 56 per cent to 37 per cent among Hispanic voters—but she is not attracting the numbers she needs to win the election, especially among men.
When Democrats fall short with these usually stalwart constituencies, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, they lose. In Michigan, where Clinton lost narrowly, Black turnout in Detroit dropped steeply. And Trump is chasing these votes: on Friday, he held a rally at Detroit’s Huntington Place—not a typical venue for a Republican presidential nominee just days out from the election.
Compared to Biden’s numbers four years ago, Harris is far enough behind that lackadaisical support from these key constituencies could cost her the election. According to exit polls in 2020, Biden won 92 per cent of Black votes and 63 per cent of Hispanic support, and many political analysts credited the president’s narrow win to these groups.
Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 congressional elections, but there were already signs erosion among Hispanic voters, where the party’s vote share fell from 72 per cent to 60 per cent. According to Brookings, overall turnout of Black and Hispanic voters was also lower in 2022 than in 2018, notably among younger minorities. Perhaps the sharp inflation during the Biden presidency has left Harris with a difficult climb back.
One of the great mysteries of the 2024 election is why Trump—a racist who dines with white nationalists, who threatens to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (including millions of Hispanic people), who says they are “poisoning the blood of our country” and who lies about Haitians eating dogs and cats—is doing so much better with these groups than previous Republican presidential candidates.
Among the theories Cohn and other political analysts have offered are these: Trump projects a basic macho strength that appeals to Black and Hispanic men; they no longer find his bizarre tirades and racist dog-whistles as shocking or offensive as they once did; they approve of some Trump policies like a border wall. Most of all, Cohn argues, “it’s the economy, stupid”. In May this year, only 20 per cent of Hispanic voters and 27 per cent of Black voters rated the economy as doing well, according to Pew. (A slightly higher number of white voters rate the economy as good or excellent). Many Black and Hispanic people also say that they have had to cut back on basics, including groceries and medicines.
But if such voters are turning to Trump because they think he made them better off, they may be fooling themselves. Historically, Black and Latino people have fared better economically under Democratic presidents. From the 1970s until 2022, according to academic research, more Black and Latino children escaped poverty, a higher share of both Black and Latino adults were employed, and inequalities of income, child poverty rates and employment between Black and Latino Americans and white Americans declined when Democratic presidents sat in the White House. Even during the Biden years—a period of high inflation—the pattern has held, according to the data.
Maria Elena Villar, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who has conducted focus groups of undecided Hispanic voters in Florida, found that Trump has been “exciting people with the negative”, stressing the toll inflation has taken on the Hispanic community. “It’s incredible how effective he’s been,” she says. He also uses scare tactics: a Trump television advert aired during last week’s Sunday football attacked Harris for supporting federally subsidised healthcare and surgery for transgender inmates. Some culturally conservative Hispanic voters see trans issues as “the new scary thing,” Villar explains.
Harris has her own unique problems with these voter groups. Some Black voters dislike her record as a prosecutor during an era of mass incarceration. She is held responsible for the increase in undocumented immigration during the Biden years, something that more established Hispanic voter communities oppose.
She has so far been unsuccessful in convincing enough Black and Hispanic or Latino men, in particular, that the Biden administration has helped them, and she is now forced to redouble her efforts, expending precious time and resources at a time when all seven battleground states are deadlocked. Her campaign team have said she will “specifically talk to Black men, who have felt left out and marginalised even within the Democratic party at times.”
This week she appeared on popular Black media shows, including Roland Martin’s Unfiltered and with radio host Charlamagne tha God. She sharpened her attacks on Trump, arguing that his policies were harmful to “middle class folk”, citing his past racism, calling out his lies about Haitians and even calling him a “fascist”. She also talked about her plans to promote economic opportunities for Black men, including offering them business loans and other growth incentives.
The Harris campaign has plenty of money to spend on getting out the Democratic vote in Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods of battleground cities. Trump is believed to have a less organised team on the ground. But what Harris lacks is time. It’s hard to imagine her reaching the numbers that she and Biden enjoyed four years ago by 5th November—and in this tight an election, that slippage could prove decisive.
