Are Latino pollsters helping or hurting the Democratic cause?

As Democrats confront declining Latino support across three consecutive presidential elections, a fierce debate is unfolding within the party: Are Latino advocacy groups and polling firms helping or hurting the Democratic cause?

Critics argue that a flawed messaging strategy — and a complacent advocacy infrastructure — have led to Latino voters drifting right, even toward Donald Trump. But advocates push back, warning that the narrative of a dramatic rightward shift is exaggerated and politically dangerous.

The Latino vote’s rightward shift

Latinos’ support for Democrats has dwindled across the last three presidential elections. In 2016, 79% of Latinos voted for Hilary Clinton. In 2020, 70% of Latinos voted for Joe Biden. In 2024, 62% of Latinos voted for Kamala Harris. And a San Francisco Chronicle analysis of voter data found that in California, the counties with higher shares of Latino residents saw larger shifts toward Trump.

The decline in Latino voter support for the Democratic party has led some political insiders to question whether the people in charge of analyzing and shaping the messaging that will resonate with Latino voters are doing a good job.

“You're either winning or you're losing,” said Fernand Amandi, former President Barack Obama's lead Latino-focused pollster and strategist. “And over the last three presidential cycles, Democrats have been losing support amongst Hispanics. If there's no accountability, then why are they even doing this work?”

The debate over immigration

Critics like Amandi and Mike Madrid, a veteran political strategist who founded the Lincoln Project, say that Democrats lost their way with Latino voters by overemphasizing immigration as an issue that motivates the Latino electorate.

They say that this started in the mid aughts, a time when the Latino population surged from roughly 35 million in the year 2000 to more than 50 million in 2010. Democrats were eyeing the ever-growing Latino community and hoping that in the same way that the Black community had become a reliably Democratic voting block by the 1960s, the Latino vote could become reliably blue as well.

“Politically there needed to be an issue that created a racial voting bloc amongst Latinos where none existed,” Madrid said. “For whatever reason immigration [became the] issue.”

Data started to emerge backing up this idea. A firm called Latino Decisions released a poll in 2014 that found immigration reform was the number one issue for Latino voters — at 44%, ahead of things like jobs and the economy, education and healthcare.

Matt Baretto, one of the founders of Latino Decisions, worked on the last three Democratic presidential campaigns, including the Harris-Walz campaign.

Amandi did not think immigration was as big of a motivating issue as others were saying. He argues that pocketbook issues were always more important to the Latino community.

But Baretto stands behind the data his firm gathered about the importance of immigration to the Latino electorate.

“We stand by those analyses. They've been published in social science journals,” Baretto said. “I think the critics are sort of misguided and sort of too focused on the past.”

The Harris campaign’s appeal to Latino voters

Where Baretto and his critics align is in thinking that when Harris entered the presidential race, she had no chance to win over the Latino electorate, that she was doomed from the start. But they don’t agree on why.

Madrid thinks Harris was not able to woo more Latino voters because her campaign could not realign the perception of where the Democrats stood on immigration in the time she had to campaign.

“She adjusted dramatically to the right,” Madrid said. “But … you can't make up for 15 years of bad branding in 90 days. You just can't do it.”

Conversely, Baretto thinks voters in general across all demographics were simply really unhappy with Democrats.

“Latinos are not the ones who quote lost this election. There was shifts in every single demographic in the United States, and yes, there were shifts in the Latino vote, but there was something much larger going on here,” Baretto said. “We saw a lot of it as … the national and even international moment that we were in, following COVID and the economic recovery. People were frustrated and inflation was only slowly getting addressed and getting abated. The president was not able to wave a magic wand and make inflation go away.”

Where Latinos stand on immigration today

Immigration policy and enforcement has taken center stage again in our national politics as federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps across Los Angeles in the first large-scale enforcement action under the second Trump administration this June. Local immigrants rights groups, which have braced for this for months, pushed back in protests marked by resistance and anger.

Angelica Salas, president of CHIRLA, the coalition for human immigrant rights in Los Angeles, doesn’t think that the Democratic Party’s loss of Latino voter support is necessarily a reflection of Latinos abandoning immigration as an important issue. Salas said it has more to do with Democrats inability to deliver on their promises around immigration.

“Every year there's a promise for a path to citizenship. And then there are no results. And so that also creates a sense of who is able to get things across the finish line,” Salas said.

In fact, Salas finds the argument that Latinos don’t care about immigration to be really dangerous.

“It has been used in order to excuse Republicans doing incredible harm to our community and some of the Democrats," Salas said. "It's also created an excuse not to stand up boldly against some of the worst actions of this administration.”

Listen • 53:08

Listen • 53:08

Are Latino pollsters helping or hurting the Democratic cause?

As Democrats confront declining Latino support across three consecutive presidential elections, a fierce debate is unfolding within the party: Are Latino advocacy groups and polling firms helping or hurting the Democratic cause? Critics argue that a flawed messaging strategy — and a complacent advocacy infrastructure — have led to Latino voters drifting right, even toward Donald Trump. But advocates push back, warning that the narrative of a dramatic rightward shift is exaggerated and politically dangerous. In the final episode of a three-part collaboration with Latino USA, Imperfect Paradise host Antonia Cereijido and Latino USAhost Maria Hinojosa take you inside the high-stakes debate over the future of Latino political power in America.