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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be slipping among two cohorts that make up the foundation of the Democratic base — Latinos and young people — though political strategists who spoke to Newsweek caution that the numbers may look worse for the nominee than they really are.
A pair of surveys released this week show that Harris has a drastically smaller advantage among Latino voters nationwide than any other recent Democratic nominee, and is outright trailing among voters aged 18-29 in Wisconsin.
Harris' showing among Latinos is at the Democrats' lowest level in the past four presidential cycles, according to a NBC News/Telemundo poll conducted between September 16 to 23.
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With just 54 percent support among registered Latino voters, Harris has a mere 14-point advantage over former President Donald Trump, who has 40 percent support among the voting bloc. Another 6 percent said they were unsure or wouldn't vote.
The figures are still an improvement from President Joe Biden's standing when he was at the top of the ticket earlier this year, but nearly 10 points lower than Biden's numbers in NBC's 2020 polling, when 63 percent of Latinos supported his White House bid.
In 2016, 69 percent of Latino voters said they would back Hillary Clinton. In 2012, 65 percent supported then-President Barack Obama's reelection bid.
Perhaps more worrying for Democrats, Harris is underwater among young voters in one of the closest swing states that's also one of three bricks in her so-called "blue wall": Wisconsin. The vice president is behind Trump when it comes to voters aged 18 to 29 in the Midwestern state, with just 40 percent support to Trump's 58 percent, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll of the state.
Young voters were instrumental to Biden's 2020 win. In 2022 Wisconsin led the nation in youth turnout, with nearly half of Wisconsinites under the age of 25 casting a ballot in that midterm election, according to Census data.
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Four presidential elections ago, Obama carried young Wisconsin voters by 29 points, while still tying with Republican Senator John McCain among older Americans, exit polls show.
This time, Harris has the upper hand over Trump among Wisconsinites aged 65 and up, with 55 percent support to Trump's 40 percent, suggesting a remarkable shift among the cohort of voters most likely to show up at the polls. While Democrats have largely relied on young voters in the past, older voters have historically backed the GOP.
Although neither poll offered particularly good news for Harris, experts caution reading into such data, warning of higher error margins. The New York Times poll's margin of error was +/-4 percentage points. The NBC poll has an MOE of +/-3.1 percentage points.
"The only way to be sure of the trend is to examine similar cross tabs across several surveys," political pundit Steve Schier told Newsweek. "The Latino survey is also interesting but has a low number of respondents are a high error margin."
"That said, there have been several surveys showing Trump doing poorly with older voters but surprisingly well with Latino voters," he said.
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Analyzing what that means for the electoral college map, Schier said that those trends may end up boosting Trump in Sunbelt states that have high Latino populations, but noted it could also hurt the former president in states with older white populations and small Latino populations like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
"It's a mixed bag of results," he said.
Latino advocacy groups have also highlighted another poll that painted a drastically different picture of the race. Entravision, which released its poll on Monday, found Harris leading by a wider margin, with 56 percent support to Trump's 33 percent. The survey was conducted between September 11 and 20 among 500 Latino voters nationwide.
Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), said it was important to acknowledge that the NBC poll has "an extremely small immigrant sample and an extreme generation sample."
"It's mostly 3rd 4th and 5th generation acculturated Latinos," Proaño told Newsweek.
"The two polls swing by a wide margin of 24 points," he said of the Entravision and NBC/Telemundo surveys.
"Someone is very wrong."
Proaño said that Harris "has done extremely well in building support across the Latino community and generating excitement and enthusiasm with the Latino constituency." He said the LULAC believes she will continue to increase her margin with Latinos in the coming weeks.
Addressing the fact that Latino men have drove down Harris' support in the NBC poll, Proaño believes that women will save her in the end: "Latina voters are the key for Harris and her ability to win that majority will counterbalance the support that Trump is getting among Latino men."
Political consultant Jay Townsend agreed that the NBC and Times polls may be outliers.
"I would caution reading too much into what is a small subset of voters done in one survey," Townsend said, noting that young Wisconsin voters made up 12 percent of the entire Times/Siena survey. "And by the same token, cautious about reading too much into the results of voters over 65, despite some ancillary evidence that seniors have shifted to Harris in recent polls."
He pointed out that both parties have had difficulties exciting young voters.
"There is evidence in national polls that Harris will perform better among seniors than Biden did, and less well among younger, African-Americans and Hispanic voters," Townsend told Newsweek. "Both candidates are having trouble connecting with younger voters in this cycle."
Even though Harris' standing among young voters is still shaky, it's exponentially better than Biden's. The latest Youth Poll released by Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics last week showed Harris with a 31-point lead among young voters nationally. In March, Harvard's poll showed Biden with a 13-point advantage among the age demographic.
"Today, among likely voters [ages 18 to 29], Harris leads women by 47. She leads men by 17," John Della Volpe, the institute's polling director, told the Washington Post. "The female numbers are very close to where Biden was [with young women in 2020]. [But] Biden had a 28-point lead among men four years ago."
"Trump is doing 10 points better among [young] men than he did four years ago," Della Volpe said. "The question is, why? It's clearly not a coincidence. Trump has spent tens of millions of dollars to connect and to communicate with young men. I believe he knew that one of the only pathways to victory was to expand his base, and one of the areas where he had an opportunity is with first-time voters, younger men."
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