Hey, everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Political Director. And welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. More than 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year. How many of those eligible voters come out to the polls, and who do they cast their ballots for — well, answers to those questions could be critical to this election's outcome. Courting the support of Latino voters has been a very high priority for Democrats and Republicans alike this year, as Democrats try to shore up support among Latinos and increase turnout and Republicans look to chip away at what for decades has been a solid lead for Democrats in this voter bloc. In 2020, former President Donald Trump narrowed that support gap with Latino voters, an improvement over his standing in 2016. And this year, it looked like Trump could significantly build on those gains. But, as with so many things in this race, things shifted when Vice President Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Early polling suggests that Harris is tipping the scales back in Democrats' favor with Latino voters. This week, I'm joined by Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center. He leads research planning for the center, focused on documenting the diverse landscape of the United States. He's also an expert on Latino politics and culture. Mark, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

'I want to start by bringing our viewers back to where we were in 2020. According to the exit polls that we conduct as part of the Consortium of Television Networks, 13% of the electorate in 2020 was Latino. That was the share of the overall electorate, and they split their vote 65% Biden, 32% Trump. So a 33-point advantage for Biden. And then we saw a year worth of polling over the last year showing that advantage, at least that large of an advantage, had gone away for Joe Biden. Now, of course, over the last six weeks, there's a new Democrat atop the ticket with Kamala Harris. And we see both sides — the Trump side and the Harris side — competing aggressively for Latino voters. And we know that Trump believes he can make significant inroads and increase his support. So that's sort of the baseline of where we start the conversation, so that I can understand from you: A, is Trump right? Can he make significant inroads in this election with the Latino vote?

It may very well be that he can. A significant number of Latino voters told us back in July, 24%, that they were going to support, for example, Robert Kennedy. And now that Robert Kennedy has left the race, how are those voters going to split between Harris and Trump? Now, admittedly, our August survey shows that Harris had won over many of those folks and that her support was at 52% in August, right before the DNC, and Trump's was at 35. But, notably, Trump didn't lose any ground when Harris entered the race. And certainly we've seen other Republicans in the past do better than Trump with Latino voters. Think back to, for example, George Bush in 2004, who won around 40 to 44% of Latino voters' support. And if you even go back further, Ronald Reagan had been about where Donald Trump is now at about 35 to 38%, depending on whether we're talking about 80 or 84. All this says to me is that Latino voters have moved and can move, and there probably likely is some room for both candidates to win some of those undecided Latino voters.

How have you assessed the appeal that each candidate is making? It's always so hard to talk about one racial voting bloc. Obviously, the Latino vote is not monolithic. There are lots and lots of differences within the Latino community and their politics. And yet there's also not a lot of differences from the population overall in terms of like, most important issues. So all of that sort of gets boiled together. And I'm just wondering how you see the Harris side and the Trump side making their pitch to this critical voting bloc.

'Well, I think there's some important factors to describe who Latino voters are. The first is that they're dispersed across the country. So in many of the battleground states, while Latino voters may not be 40 or 35% of voters in those states, they are a significant share. In a close election, they could be 5% or 6%, say in Pennsylvania, they could be up to 24% in a place like Arizona. So Latino voters are dispersed across the country, which means the campaigns are probably going to be reaching out to them in many ways because of their importance in those places. But as you noted, Latino voters are of many different backgrounds, many different origins. A lot of them are young and first-time voters, and many of them show and reflect the positions of, say, young Americans when it comes to things like being religiously affiliated or their opinions about immigration reform. All that is to say, there's a multitude of ways in which one might appeal to Latino voters. So in a place like Arizona, border issues may be more important. In a place like Nevada, maybe issues like appealing to Latinos who have parents who are undocumented immigrants. And in a place like Georgia, it can be a very different set of circumstances around the economy. So it does depend on place to place. And here's where you start to see some of the campaigns really tailoring their messages. That's what happened back in 2020, in Florida, with Donald Trump in South Florida, particularly to Cuban and Venezuelan communities, for example.

'I mean, he did better in Miami-Dade County than we had seen a Republican do in, I don't know how long, maybe ever. But it was a dramatic development in what is maybe no longer a battleground state. But what is a big key state in American politics.

'And that's exactly right. And during the Obama years, we had seen Cuban voters and Miami-Dade County's Hispanic voters leaning more towards the Democrats. In fact, the conversation had been, could it be the Cubans are now leaning and going Democrat? And now look at where we are. We're in a very different place. But the Latino population of today compared to even back in 2008, it's a very different population. It's much bigger. It's grown by at least 30% since then, and it is more diverse with people from many more different backgrounds, like Venezuelans and Colombians and Dominicans, many of whom are relatively new arrivals.

In the research, you were just describing that you did. I take your point that Trump's number was sort of unmoved. But you saw this Harris consolidation, getting some Latinos back into the fold for her that were not there for Biden. And whether that is purely an RFK thing as you're describing or it's people coming off of the sidelines, I'm just wondering, have you been able to look under the hood? What is it that Harris was able to bring back? Was it specifically younger Latinos? Do we know how it sort of breaks down that you saw a dramatic difference between what Biden was doing at the beginning of the summer and how Harris is polling with this group now?

'So it looks like Harris has made gains across the board among the many different demographics that are part of the Latino voter group. But what's interesting here is many Latino voters who are supporting Kennedy had strong disapproval of the job that Joe Biden was doing. So in some ways, it's possible that their support for — in our poll in July — for Kennedy was a reflection of disapproval of the job that Biden has been doing. And so that's part of the reason why I think we've seen some of this shift. But it's an across-the-board change. Although, again, Trump hasn't really lost support among Latino voters despite Harris entering the race.

'Do you see an uptick in Spanish-language advertising from the candidates? Obviously, you said the Latino community is growing in the United States. Obviously, only a subset of it is primarily Spanish speaking, a lot of English speaking. But it seems to me the campaigns are trying every which way to communicate. That includes some Spanish-language advertising, whether traditional advertising on television or targeted mail or the like. Can you break down for me the language aspect of this for Latino voters, whether hearing from campaigns in maybe their native tongue of Spanish versus hearing from campaigns in English, if it's their second language?

'It's a really great question. And when you take a look at Latino registered voters, for example, you'll find that about 20% are what we would call Spanish dominant — people who primarily live their daily lives in Spanish, yes, know some English, but it's Spanish that they're most comfortable in. And in addition to that, you got about another 30% or so who are bilingual — people who speak both English and Spanish equally well. So the campaigns reaching out to Latinos in Spanish does two things. On the one hand, it reaches those who are primarily Spanish speakers. It's a way to communicate with a group of voters who may be, by the way, naturalized citizens who tend to vote at higher rates than US-born Latinos. And the second part of this is, is that when you talk about the respect that candidates show to Latinos, one of the ways to do so is through engaging them through Latino culture. Spanish is a part of that culture. So speaking to folks respectfully in Spanish can be a way to also engage with Latino voters. So there's kind of two missions here that are happening, and it's not an insignificant part of the population. Half speak Spanish in some way or another. And that's something that I think is really interesting to note. Nonetheless, English speaking Latinos are making up a growing and growing share of Latino registered voters, as most young Latinos who grew up in the United States are growing up speaking primarily English.

We're going to take a quick break, we're gonna have a lot more with Mark Hugo Lopez from Pew Research Center in just a moment.

Welcome back. We're here with Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research for Pew Research Center. We're talking about Latino voters and their critical role in the 2024 presidential election. I don't even think that's speculative. I think that's fair to say. Latino voters are going to play a critical role, if not, perhaps, determinative. Do you have any information, Mark, about a gender gap within the Latino community?

'Yes, there is. And this is something that's been emerging for some time now at least. We started noticing a gender gap back in 2008 when Barack Obama was running against John McCain. But today you'll find that, for example, among Latinos who say they're going to vote for Trump. Among Hispanic men, 39% say they're going to do so. Among Hispanic women, that number is 32%. That's a seven-point gap. I want to point out that still a significant share of women, Hispanic women are also supporting, say they're going to vote for Donald Trump. Nonetheless, this gap has been growing slightly, like by one percentage point per election cycle. But it's a gap that we've been noticing over time that's been going on among Hispanic voters.

It'll be curious to see now that there is yet again, a woman atop the ticket for the Democrats. And I know it'll take a little bit more time with her there to see if that grows, you know, exponentially, this cycle or not. How do you look at the issue matrix and what you see? Obviously, the economy is top of mind for voters overall across the country. But what are the dominant issues that are driving Latinos in their vote choice so far?

'So clearly the economy, as you mentioned, it's an important issue for Latino voters and others as well, particularly inflation. It's what's shown up regularly as the top issue, whether we ask what should the Congress and president address this year, or, what is the top problem facing the country? Inflation has been rated by Latino voters as number one, but some other issues pop up as well. Everything from health care to education to climate change pop up as issues, in addition to immigration. Now, immigration is oftentimes characterized as the way to reach Latino voters. They care about immigration more than other groups. To some extent, that is true. However, as an issue, if you ask about 20 different issues, everything from economy to racial justice to, foreign policy, immigration is typically in the middle. We also found that when it comes to immigration policy, the policies that would make things better, say, at the US-Mexico border. On the one hand, our January survey found that 64% of Latino adults said more judges, more adjudicators at the border for asylum seekers would really make things better. In addition, though, about a third said more deportations of unauthorized immigrants in the country, undocumented people in the country, would also make things better. So let me say that again: one-third. And the reason why I want to repeat that is because back in 2010, when we were talking about Arizona's SB 1070 and that conversation around immigration reform then, only about 15% of Latino adults then said that they thought deportation of unauthorized immigrants was the best thing to do for addressing that situation. So there has been some change, again reflecting the growing diversity and the different viewpoints of the population.

'Well, it's also interesting because when I hear you say one-third puts deportation atop of the list of the things that can most effectively solve the crisis, it kind of mirrors Donald Trump's support among Latinos in your polling. Right? And that is clearly his issue position on the matter, the most prominent portion of his issue position. And, you know, you say two-thirds sort of lean into judges or things that would get the asylum-seeking process a little more effective. And, well, obviously, Harris is polling I think you said at 52%, not as high as two-thirds, but you can see that that's a position that's more aligned with hers. Now, one thing we heard at the Democratic National Convention last week from Kamala Harris was her attempt to really flip the script on this issue, that when it comes to border security, the Democrats have been playing defense on so much and just tie herself completely to that bipartisan bill that got hammered out in the Congress earlier this year, until Donald Trump realized it had a real chance of being signed into law, and he thought that might hurt him politically. And he called his Republican allies on the Hill and said, vote this down. This is not going to help the political cause this year.

Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. And here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.

Do you have a sense in your survey research about how Latinos responded to that border security compromise bill that was being hammered out and how they responded to Trump's actions related to it?

Well, in the same set of findings from the survey in January about what would make things better at the border, one of the other findings was about, what about expanding the border wall? And of the ten or so policies that we asked about, that was dead last among Latinos as a thing that would make things better. So only 24% said so. But interestingly, we also found that 54% of Latinos told us if there could be more pathways for people to legally come to the country, that could make things better. You find a mix of opinions among Latinos about what would make the immigration situation better, everything from extending more opportunities to come to the country — yes some support for border security, yes, some support for deportation. But it's a mix of viewpoints, which in many ways reflected some of what was in that bill. Again, it captures the nuance of opinions that exist within Latino voters' segment of the population.

Now, you mentioned RFK's support at 24%. He didn't poll nationally anywhere near that. I mean, I think he was capping out around 15 to 18%. There is a long history of a relationship between the Kennedy family — family of the first Catholic president in the United States — and Latinos. And, obviously, I think part of that probably was playing out there. Should that lead us to believe that his suspending his campaign and getting behind Trump, that he could be perhaps a very strong ambassador for Trump with Latino voters?

I think it remains to be seen whether he will be. And given that our August survey had shown that his support among Latinos had fallen from July, from that 24% in July to about 10% in August suggests to me some people may have already shifted even before Kennedy decided to leave that leave the race. However, as we've been talking about, how well Trump can do is important among Latino voters because it could be, in some cases, perhaps important, decisive or key to winning in some key battleground states, so even just a little bit of a change could help Trump in some cases.

And where does the issue of abortion fall for Latino voters?

'This is interesting because over the last 20 years, we've seen Latinos shift in their views. The Latino population used to be more Catholic. Today, though, the Catholic share is in decline. I don't know if you know this or not, but only about 45% of Latino adults tell us they're Catholics. Fourteen years ago, in 2010, it was at two-thirds of Latinos saying that they were Catholic. At the same time, there's a growing number of people who have no religious affiliation. And so the share of Latinos who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases is now over 60%. It looks more like the general public every day. And so Latinos have shifted in this. I would also say, though, there are surveys over the years that have shown that Latinos don't quite share the same degree of support for making abortion illegal that, say, you see among Republicans. So even if Latinos are leaning more Republican, they're not as Republican on issues like abortion or gun control as the regular Republican vote.

That's particularly interesting, given Arizona and Nevada, of the battleground states, are the two with the largest Latino population, and they are going to have abortion amendments on the ballot in those states and it'll be interesting to see, exactly your point to sort of the partizanship side of where Latinos have been moving take over or might this issue cut against that in some way. That will be something fascinating for us to watch. Mark Hugo Lopez, I thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you being here.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

'That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. We want to hear from you. Is there a question you'd like answered about this election cycle? Is there a guest you really want to hear from? Give us a call at (202) 618-9460, or send us an email at CNN Political Briefing@Gmail.com. And you might just be featured in a future episode of the podcast. So don't forget to tell us your name, where you're from, how we can reach you, and if you give us permission to use the recording on the podcast. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.