Latino voters in battlegrounds share diverse priorities they want Harris, Trump to address

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the border town of Douglas, Arizona, in late September, it marked the first time Alexandra Cáñez and her friends, Miguel Angel Felix Pacheco and Hector Felix, had ever seen a presidential candidate visit what they call their "sleepy" town.

The friends -- all in their 20s -- have differing views of the nearby border. Felix calls it part of his "everyday life;" Cáñez said "everyone kind of disregards our community even though everyone is always talking about the border" and welcomed Harris' attention.

Harris visited the critical battleground state of Arizona to announce stricter border policies -- a key voter issue as Election Day approaches. Harris and former President Donald Trump are working to both touch on key voter issues, such as border security, immigration and the economy while trying to appeal to diverse Latino voters -- one of the fastest-growing and largest groups -- in battleground states.

Latinos have grown at the second-fastest rate of any major racial and ethnic group in the U.S. electorate since the last presidential election, according to Pew Research. They are the second-largest group of eligible voters in the United States.

Through ads, outreach and campaign events, both the Harris and Trump campaigns have worked to engage Latino voters -- including participating in two different Univision town hall events in front of Spanish-speaking audiences with Harris' event on Thursday evening and Trump's taking place next week.

Still, many Latinos say photos of politicians touching the border wall aren't going to solve their problems.

"I think where both parties really mess it up is they put us all in the same bucket," said Enrique Castro, a Reading, Pennsylvania, voter who is Puerto Rican. "Yes, I acknowledge something needs to be done about the border, but them going down there to take pictures at the border, that's not gonna change anything here, especially without an actual plan of fixing it without making immigrants look like they're criminals."

Reading, Pennsylvania, often referred to as the "Latino Belt," boast 67% of its population has Latin decent, according to U.S. census figures. In 2011, it was declared the poorest city in America with a poverty rate of 41% -- although it dropped to 29% in 2023, which is still more than double the national average, according to U.S. Census Bureau findings.

For Reading voters -- as well as Latino voters overall, both Latino outreach and economic messaging are important.

The top issues for Hispanic voters are the economy, inflation and health care, according to an August ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. The priorities fall right in line with the top issues for Americans overall, polling shows.

Diversity within the Latino community

In the battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Arizona, where Harris and Trump are locked in a razor-thin race, the Latino vote is crucial in getting them over the finish line -- and knowing how to appeal to the Latino voters in both border states and other battlegrounds is a crucial mission as Election Day nears, experts told ABC News.

"[Latinos] come from so many different countries of origin, so you can't just show up in Miami with a sombrero and a taco truck," said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.

The diversity of the community makes it difficult to target the ranging cultural and generational differences. What matters to an El Salvadoran American varies from Puerto Ricans and so, too, should the outreach toward these groups, Rocha said.

In order to reach these differing cultural identities including under the Latino umbrella, the Harris campaign said it has launched a robust effort to "micro target" the community – an effort that tailors outreach to best serve its intended audience.

"The Latino vote is as critical as it is diverse, and since day one, our campaign has reflected our community's diversity. With over 13 Latino Diaspora groups including, Boricuas con Kamala, Venezolanos con Kamala and Mexicanos con Kamala, an aggressive paid media campaign targeting Latinos everywhere they consume news, and new organizing efforts on WhatsApp, we're running an all-the-above Latino outreach strategy designed to earn every single vote," Harris-Walz Coalitions Media Director Maca Casado said in a statement.

The Harris campaign, for their part, has made efforts to decenter their message from identity politics. They're running ads in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania in both English and Spanish that focus on the economy, high drug prices and crime.

Rocha said the Harris campaign is effective in targeting different Latino voters.

"You see them doing ads in Pennsylvania in Puerto Rican Spanish and ads in Arizona in Mexican Spanish," Rocha said. "The campaign's doing it in the right way: micro-targeting, multiple languages, different cultural content."

Republican strategist Mike Madrid said he agrees that speaking to varying groups of Latinos voters based on their cultural identity has merit, but he said he thinks the campaign should be more focused on Latinos as "working-class voters." That strategy could appeal to Latinos' views on the economy, an election issue where Trump leads Harris, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll.

"They're over micro-targeting, and they're not doing enough to focus on the largest common thread, which is an economic populist, pocketbook voter," said Madrid, who co-founded The Lincoln Project to oppose Trump and actively helped Biden in his 2020 presidential bid. "What they should be doing is speaking more to them as working-class voters and less as Latino voters."

Madrid said Republicans are employing this strategy by targeting Latinos as working-class Americans rather than by their ethnic identity.

In June, the Trump campaign rebranded its Hispanic outreach from "Latinos for Trump" to "Latino Americans for Trump," emphasizing the American identity of the Latino voter. Trump's campaign also opened an office in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Earlier this week, Trump held a rally in Reading, during which he falsely described immigration as an invasion.

"We will not allow these people to invade us or to conquer us," Trump said.

Both campaigns are working to appeal to voters in Pennsylvania, an important battleground state, which Biden won by some 80,000 votes in 2020. Harris is only ahead by a 1% margin, according to 538's polling average.

Also, both candidates are working to attract the coveted Latino vote in the battlegrounds. Latino voters divide 57-39%, Harris-Trump, according to a September Pew Research study -- a far greater divide compared to Black voters who split 77-13%.

The number of Latinos eligible to vote has grown by 40% since 2016, according to Pew Research. Rocha said that the relative newness of the community in the United States has made them less likely to be loyal to one particular party and more likely to vote based on "who shows up."

But Madrid warns that Democrats risk alienating third and fourth generation voters who no longer identify with politicians who are simply showing up. He surmised that these younger voters are creating an "emergence of a new vote."

"It's an emergence because [they] are so young," said Madrid.

Thirty-one percent of Latino voters are under 30, according to Pew Research, and an estimated 36.2 million are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020. This represents 50% of the total growth in eligible voters during this time, Pew Research found.

"They're coming online and emerging as something very unique," Madrid added.

Felix, Cáñez and Pacheco of Douglas spoke to ABC News after a study session at Cochise Community College where Harris was making a planned campaign stop at the same time. As they watched attendees go inside, they said they would not be hearing Harris speak and were unsure about whether her visit to their community would translate into a vote for the vice president in November.

Still, the three friends continued to wait outside the venue in hopes of catching a glimpse of Harris.

Pacheco said he was hoping to see something from Harris that would inspire him to participate in a way other politicians have failed to do for him so far.

"[I'm] hoping to see something we haven't seen before," Pacheco said.