Vice President Kamala Harris is facing challenges with Hispanic voters that could jeopardize key states in the upcoming election, according to ABC News Political Director Rick Klein. In an ABC News poll released on September 15, Harris led former President Donald Trump by 17% among likely Hispanic voters. Klein noted that this slim margin could potentially allow Trump to win crucial states like Arizona and Nevada.
“Right now, our latest polling shows a solid lead among Latino voters for Kamala Harris, 17 points in our latest ABC-Ipsos poll from just a couple of days ago, but that isn’t nearly the edge she has among black voters or Asian voters and it isn’t nearly the edge that previous Democratic candidates for president have had — 30-plus point advantage for Joe Biden in the exit polls among Latino voters from four years ago,” Klein told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos.
“Hillary Clinton won Latino voters by 40 points and, of course, she still lost the presidency, so there’s some real ground to make up across demographics, but particularly with Latino voters. Kamala Harris has issues that she’s got to attend to,” Klein added.
Before President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection on July 21, former President Donald Trump gained significant support among Hispanic voters, largely due to issues such as immigration and the economy. Since Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, she has managed to regain some of that support. According to figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Border Patrol has encountered nearly 7.4 million illegal immigrants since the beginning of fiscal year 2021.
WATCH:
In recent polling from September 3 to 18, Trump trails Harris by 2.2% in the RealClearPolitics average. Harris’s lead increases to an average of 2.6% when including Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West, and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver in the surveys. But other analysts say Trump’s actual numbers are being underreported again and that is especially true in the important swing states.
One of the nation’s most trusted pollsters is challenging the Democratic narrative that Harris is dominating her GOP rival. Recent data reveals that Trump is performing significantly better at this stage of the election cycle compared to his previous White House campaigns in 2016 and 2020. In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, pollster Matt Towery highlighted the latest figures, asserting that Trump is currently leading Harris. He criticized the left-leaning media and other pollsters for portraying Harris as the frontrunner despite the data showing Trump’s stronger position.
“Explain how these candidates could be tied nationally, but Kamala is up in Pennsylvania? What does that mean?” Ingraham asked to begin the segment.
“Well, you know, let me just say this. The polling gurus and predictors are going to start telling you over the next month and a half that Harris is gaining speed in these various battleground states,” Towery responded. “They’re somehow going to say that she’s gaining speed in the national polls. I’m just going to predict it. They’re going to say that she’s going to win and Trump will lose. It makes no sense.
“People have to understand. Trump is running way ahead of where he has in the last two cycles that he ran in the national average. I mean, she is much closer than either Biden or, before that, Hillary Clinton. And in these various states, now, you know, everybody has their different way of sampling things. I think all of these states are very tight,” he continued. “But I don’t think there’s any state where anyone has a four or five-point lead right now that’s a battleground state. I just don’t see it, and I don’t believe it.”
