Walter Mendoza, 30, was exasperated with his mother, Ana, when they walked into Supremo Foods in Allentown, Pennsylvania, last week.
Walter Mendoza mentioned that they had to reduce their shopping list to the minimum, which he angrily blamed on President Joe Biden: “This is happening because your president made these prices go up too much!” he told his mother.
“Because your president screwed up big time,” Ana Mendoza, a 52-year-old warehouse manager, retorted to her Trump-supporting son. “Inflation came after the pandemic when he screwed up.”
Arguments about prices and presidents are taking place all over the United States, but in the case of the Mendozas, the stakes are high.
The 2024 campaign has marked the entry into the race of some 36 million Latino voters who are now eligible to vote in the country, a group so large, geographically dispersed and politically divided that it will be crucial to deciding who wins the White House.
After years of Democratic dominance, Donald Trump has made strong inroads among these voters. That force threatens Vice President Kamala Harris’s path to victory, not only in the battleground states of the Southwest, but also in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where even relatively small Latino communities can prove decisive in a close race.
In the final days of the campaign, Democrats have launched a closing message that they hope will stem the exodus. After months of focusing on economic issues, they have pounced on the insult of a pro-Trump comedian who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” at a rally at Madison Square Garden.
Democrats believe the increased emphasis on ethnic identity will appeal to Latino voters who had leaned toward Trump or considered sitting out the election. Democrats have aired new ads repeating the comments and have used a parade of celebrities to emphasize the stakes.
“They are so terrified of your power,” playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda told a group of young Latino Harris supporters in Philadelphia last week. “Use that power to your advantage if you don’t want to see that future for your country.”
Perhaps nowhere are these efforts more urgent than in Pennsylvania, where the race is tied and Latinos make up more than 5 percent of the electorate. A string of industrial cities with growing Latino majorities, including Allentown, Hazleton and Reading, have become hotbeds of campaigning. Last week, Trump met with voters in Allentown, which has a large Puerto Rican community, and Harris held her own rally there on Monday.
Speaking to more than three dozen Latino voters in eastern Pennsylvania revealed that voters are highly engaged and deeply divided. While some view Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as a direct threat to their community and are upset, others celebrate it, convinced it will strengthen their own security in the United States.
The number of Latino voters in Pennsylvania has nearly tripled over the past two decades. This growth mirrors the national picture: More than 30 percent of Latinos who vote this year are expected to be first-time voters.
For months, national polls have shown Democrats losing ground, hitting a low point this summer when Biden was still the nominee. Support among Latinos rebounded after Harris entered the race but has not returned to the levels Biden had just four years ago and remains well below former President Barack Obama’s benchmarks.
In mid-October, a New York Times/Siena College poll found Harris holding 56 percent of the Latino vote, down from Biden’s 62 percent in 2020. Trump has 37 percent, holding steady for the past four years.
A drop in support from Hispanic voters may not be devastating for Harris if she maintains the same level of support among all other demographic groups. But if she also loses support from young voters or black voters, for example, she is unlikely to win the White House. Both campaigns have acknowledged this year that they can no longer win with white voters alone.
Victor Martinez, who owns several Spanish-language radio stations in eastern Pennsylvania and hosts El Relajo de la Mañana from Allentown, said his audience had gotten more attention from Democrats than ever before. Martinez, an active Harris supporter, said the Trump campaign had declined his interview requests and did not advertise on his stations.
“There is a feeling of pride: you insulted us and now you will see,” he said.
There was plenty of anger on social media. Nicky Jam, a Puerto Rican reggaeton star with 44 million Instagram followers, endorsed Trump in September. But late last week, he revoked his support in an Instagram post. Nicky Jam did not endorse Harris, but Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who has stayed out of continental politics, did.
The dividing lines that separate Latino voters are no different than those that separate other voters: gender, religion, education level and age. Like voters in general, Latinos consistently cite the economy as their top issue.
The Trump campaign has eschewed what might be considered traditional outreach to Hispanics (spending significantly more on Spanish-language media, for example), but has instead sought out support from local Latino evangelical leaders, popular hip-hop musicians and social media stars. The campaign has also opened several campaign offices in heavily Latino cities across the country, including Reading.
Although his campaign initially distanced itself from the comedian’s comments, Trump never apologized. Instead, he boasted about the support he has among Hispanic voters.
“Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than me, nobody,” he told the crowd in Allentown, three days after the Madison Square Garden rally.
Several polls have shown that Trump is popular among Latino voters who came to the country as immigrants, and a large number of Latino voters say they are not concerned about Trump’s anti-immigrant comments or his hardline stances on immigration, including his plans for mass deportations.
“If you do things legally, if you follow the rules, you’ll be fine,” said Normando Santos, a Trump supporter who emigrated from Mexico to Hazleton more than 20 years ago. “I’m not worried.”
The Times/Siena poll found that about 4 in 10 Hispanic voters said they don’t take the former president very seriously when he speaks. Half of Hispanic men said people take his words too seriously.
