By David Noriega -
NBC News
In the heart of Nevada's most Latino zip code, shoppers at the Broadacres Flea Market gather every weekend to sip micheladas and listen to live norteño music.
Soon, they will be at the center of a major battle for Latino voters in 2024, now that there are many more undecided voters available than ever who could determine the results of the presidential election.
Historically, Latino voters, including different Hispanic communities motivated by different factors in different parts of the country, from Puerto Ricans in New York to Cubans in Florida to Mexicans in the Southwest,
have supported Democrats over Republicans
in elections. presidential elections by a comfortable margin.
Voters wait outside a polling station in Las Vegas, on November 8, 2022.Getty Images
With some fluctuation, approximately two-thirds of Latino voters have gone for the Democratic candidate in recent election cycles, and one-third have gone for the Republican.
While it's too early to say whether this election will change that, there are signs of
a potentially significant shift:
According to the latest NBC News poll, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are in
a tie with Latino voters, with Trump at 42% and Biden at 41%
(well within the poll's margin of error and with several respondents undecided).
Other polls have also shown close divisions.
And although some experts warn against exaggerating the change and point to the large number of undecided Latinos in polls like these, advocates from both parties see a more active and fluid fight for Latino support in 2024.
In a swing state like Nevada, where Latinos represent 20% of the electorate, the movement among Latino voters could end up deciding the November presidential election.
And the view from Broadacres Marketplace does not look encouraging for Biden.
“I think we need someone new,” says Mario Álvarez, a naturalized immigrant from a small town in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
Álvarez works during the week stocking supermarket shelves.
On weekends he runs a stall in Broadacres where he sells consoles and vintage video games.
He voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections, including a vote for Biden in 2020. But now, mainly because of what he perceives as a faltering economy where everything is too expensive, he is seriously flirting with a vote for Trump, despite who is not at all enthusiastic about it.
“There are many things he does wrong.
He really hates some people he doesn’t like, you know, Hispanics,” Alvarez said.
“But at the same time, sometimes we have to look at what is good for the country.
And for the economy, he would be fantastic.”
The national image
This follows
well-documented gains Trump made among Latino voters between 2016 and 2020,
when Trump expanded his share of the Hispanic electorate by about 4 percentage points nationwide, according to NBC News exit polls.
Margins were larger in several key states, with Trump winning between 5 and 10 percentage points in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia, state exit polls showed.
Some conservative Latinos see a broader shift to the right in these numbers than they have been predicting for years.
“In this election, the Hispanic electorate is not locked in for one party or another,” said Wadi Gaitan, spokesman for the LIBRE Initiative, an arm of the Koch network of conservative advocacy groups focused on Latino voters.
For years, Gaitán said, many Latinos have been drawn to the Republican Party over issues such as reducing business regulations and supporting charter schools.
And as Republicans have gained the upper hand in narrative wars on issues like the economy and crime — as well as immigration and other issues that historically motivated many Latino voters — that pull is stronger.
“Now there is equal conditions,” said Gaitán.
However, several advocates and other experts say
things haven't gone that far yet
.
“When people say the Latino vote is at stake, it sounds like the entire Latino vote is at stake, and that's not true,” said Clarissa Martínez, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, an advocacy group. liberal.
There has long been what Martínez calls a substantial “swing element” in the Hispanic electorate, that is, people who split their votes between Republicans and Democrats.
And it's a rapidly growing portion of the electorate: It's estimated that a quarter of this year's Latino voters will register for the first time.
These segments of the Hispanic population have always been susceptible to persuasion and change.
The Democrats rested on their laurels.
“Republicans successfully positioned themselves as the strongest on the economy, and they will benefit from that unless Democrats figure out what to do about it.”
Clarissa Martínez VICE PRESIDENT, LATIN VOTE INITIATIVE, UNIDOSUS
But Martínez agrees that some factors are changing the playing field in a way that could be beneficial for Republicans, as long as they seize the opportunity.
For example, the latest UnidosUS poll shows that four of the top five issues that Latinos considered most important in this election have to do with the economy, including inflation, housing and the labor market.
“For a while the Democrats rested on their laurels with these voters,” Martínez said.
But now, “Republicans have successfully positioned themselves in the eyes of many voters as the strongest on the economy, and they will benefit from that unless Democrats find something to do about it.”
Analysts tend to agree that this is largely a matter of outreach and messaging, meaning both parties have the opportunity to make substantial gains with large portions of this increasingly competitive electorate. “This is a a really important place where the parties will have to decide if they are going to invest their resources,” said Gaitán, from the LIBRE Initiative.
“It's going to come down to the party not only running, because running is a key part, but also the party making a political argument about why they should be elected.”
The trend on the ground
In Las Vegas, Trump's 2020 gains among Latinos are visible in the metropolitan area's predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods.
The state's five most Latino precincts are all in north and east Las Vegas, and some of them are as much as 87% Hispanic.
Trump made gains between 2016 and 2020 in each, with Trump's biggest improvement reaching up to 16 percentage points, according to an NBC News analysis of redistricting and voting data.
One of those precincts includes the Broadacres flea market.
Erika Castro, organizing director of the Nevada Progressive Leadership Alliance, grew up a few blocks away and her family used to shop at the flea market for things like clothing and home decorations.
Castro cannot vote: her parents brought her to the United States from Mexico undocumented as a child, and she remains undocumented.
But her job is to get American citizens in her community to vote for progressive candidates and causes.
When it comes to Biden and the national Democratic Party, she said the job is getting harder.
“Democrats really
need to make sure they have a solid vision for how they're actually going to deliver for these communities
, because people are struggling,” Castro said.
The main concerns she hears as an organizer have to do with the cost of living, especially housing.
Rent goes up for the people she talks to, sometimes several hundred dollars with each lease renewal, but salaries stay about the same.
Additionally, Democrats have failed to deliver on decades of promises on immigration reform, a major failure in a community where U.S. citizens live side-by-side with undocumented people, often in the same household.
“Many Latinos have not seen Democrats deliver on immigration;
In fact, they have seen things get much worse,” Castro said.
“That, coupled with people not being able to feed their families or keep a roof over their heads, discourages them.”
One thing everyone agrees on:
Biden and the Democrats can't take Latino voters for granted
.
Even loyal Democrats believe it.
Alex Yuman, another naturalized Mexican immigrant who owns a shop at the flea market, said he has voted Democratic since he has been a citizen and that he plans to vote for Biden in November.
But the lack of progress on immigration and economic support for his community has sapped his enthusiasm for voting.
“They want something from us, they want our vote,” he said. “But they don't want to give us anything.”