As the election quickly approaches in November, and national polls continue to show tight results, different racial and ethnic groups sharply differ on key issues. But as discourse is expected to remain at an all-time high, Hispanic Americans are expected to be the ones to watch in the coming weeks.
This demographic tends to prefer Vice President Kamala Harris by an average of 9 percentage points across 11 issues tested in the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. However, these pollsters say, there is still room for Trump to improve among the group over the next few weeks.
When it comes to voter preference, if the elections were held today, Hispanic Americans divide 56-41% Harris-Trump, which is a closer margin than typical for this usually Democratic group.
But as it related to particular issues, this group is more likely to distrust Trump, but not necessarily trust Harris either, leaving space for Trump to erode her margin, according to an ABC News analysis.
Among 11 individual issues, Harris leads Trump among Hispanic Americans by double-digit margins, from 13 to 25 points, in trust to handle six of them: gun violence, Supreme Court appointments, protecting American democracy, health care, abortion and race relations.
Hispanics are 8 percentage points less likely to pick Trump in trust to handle health care and Supreme Court nominations alike, 7 percentage points less apt to pick Trump on three others— immigration, crime/safety and race relations— and 6 percentage points less apt to pick him on abortion and protecting democracy.
Other issues, given the sample size of Hispanic Americans of these polls, seem to have little statistical difference. One of those issues being immigration. According to ABC, Trump is leading on this issue by 2 percentage points, a trend that seems to be translating among other pollsters.
But the hierarchy of salience of the issues matter at the time of going to the polls, according to ABC, which could help the Harris campaign.
Compared with Americans overall, Hispanic Americans are 13 percentage points more apt to cite gun violence as a top concern in the election, 9 percentage points more likely to cite race relations and 8 percentage points more apt to cite health care— all issues on which she leads Trump in trust.
Hispanics are a historically Democrat group, although the party has been consistently losing support among this demographic over the past few years. Nevertheless, they continue to hold a 16 percentage point lead among Republicans.
These figures are similar to those of other groups. For instance, Arian Americans also tend to be Democrats by a 15-point gap, while Black Americans hold the widest margin with a 46-point gap. White Americans, on the other hand, are 15 percentage points more likely to identify with the GOP.
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