Harris tells Latinos to be optimistic about the economy during tour of western states

Vice President Kamala Harris has a message for Hispanic Americans living in the western United States: it’s time to be optimistic about jobs and the economy.

The vice president spoke to a number of Hispanic Americans on a recent trip while touring Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada, insisting that inflation is on the downturn and job wages are increasing. She made a special point to elicit that there has been an upswing of job creation during the Biden administration, which has impacted the Hispanic American community.

In an interview with NBC Latino, the vice president explained that it takes time to see the impact of changes in the economy.

“The numbers tell us that the economy is stronger than it has been in a very long time ... it takes time for those accomplishments to be felt,” she told NBC in a Wednesday phone interview. 

She said there were a number of polices the Biden administration had promoted that are benefitting Hispanic Americans including caps on drug prices for seniors, and a cap on insulin which could more proportionately impact Latinos since they are 70% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than non-Hispanic whites.

She also boasted that the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness has helped Latinos and that the government’s investment in local, community banks has increased loans to small businesses owned by Hispanics.

The vice president told the national news network that her challenge was to “let people know who brought it to them.” 

Harris’ rainbow tour of the west to court Hispanics comes amid reports that the Democratic Party has begun losing Latino voters, and that some have even crossed over and pledged their vote to former President Donald Trump.

Recent surveys conducted by YouGov show that while Hispanics trust President Biden more on issues involving health care, foreign policy, and social justice, they trust Trump more on the economy and jobs.

ADN reported earlier this week that the survey from YouGov shows voters are split down the middle on inflation with 28% trusting Biden and 28% trusting Trump on the issue.

That trend was corroborated by NBC, which conceded that as far as the Biden-Harris ticket is concerned, “the campaign faces an uphill climb to reassure Latino voters that they are seeing better economic times.”

In 2022, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report confirmed that both Black and Latino households have spent larger shares of their household budgets on goods, food, and rent.

“When overall inflation began rising in March 2021, inflation disparities surged, with Black and Hispanic Americans experiencing higher inflation than the national average and Asian Americans experiencing lower inflation. These disparities are more than twice as large as those observed during 2019.”

A recent Gallup poll published by ADN reported that the lead Democrats once enjoyed with Hispanic adults has diminished by 20%during the Biden administration.

A recent NBC News poll conducted in January also revealed that Biden’s approval rating was down to just 35% among registered Hispanic voters, and that the president was virtually tied with Trump among that community (Trump 42% and Biden 41%). 

The numbers present a significant shift since in 2020, Biden captured twice as many Hispanics as Trump, winning 65% of the Hispanic vote and Trump only taking 32%.

One of the shifts may be due to the fact that with the rapid pace of Hispanics turning voting age each year, this election will have millions more Latinos who are of voting age.

On Oct. 26, ADN reported that the number of eligible Hispanic American voters has increased by 4.7 million since 2018 based on an analysis published by a the Pew Research Center. While Democrats still outpace Republicans in terms of voter registration, a higher number of Latinos voted Republican in the 2022 midterm elections than they did in 2018, the report says.

In 2024, about 22% of Latinos will be voting in their first presidential election, according to the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. 

About 24% of Hispanic voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for the first time during the 2022 midterm elections.

ADN also reported in December that another poll, conducted by UnidosUS, the largest Hispanic advocacy group in the United States found in its national, National Survey of Latino Voters poll that of 3,000 Hispanic eligible voters, jobs and the economy ranked as their top concerns.

Another issue that Democrats have lost ground on with the Hispanic community is immigration.

A March 4 Pew Research Center survey found that about three-quarters of Hispanics view the migration situation at the southwest U.S. border as a crisis and that the U.S. government is handling it poorly.