A sign directs Election Day voters to the ballot drop box and polling center at the La Familia Recreation Center in Denver Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline)
Two-thirds of Latino voters in Colorado supported Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election, according to an exit poll of Latino voters.
The Colorado Latino Policy Agenda, which is led by Voces Unidas and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, conducted for the second time a nonpartisan exit poll this year after launching in 2022. The group polled 600 Latino voters in Colorado, with oversampling in the 1st, 3rd and 8th Congressional Districts.
The poll found that 67% of Latinos across Colorado voted for Harris in the 2024 presidential election, which is 4% more than Latinos nationally, according to national BSP Research rolling. The group conducted bilingual interviews with voters starting on Oct. 24 and continued through Election Day.
Latino voters make up 17% of Colorado’s electorate.
“In this overall election climate, where I’m sure you are already seeing a lot of stories talking about Latinos moving towards Trump across the nation and some of the other key battleground states, it’s important to emphasize that was not the story in the state of Colorado,” Gabe Sanchez, a pollster with BSP research, said during a news conference presenting the poll findings.
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As the results from this year’s Latino Policy Agenda found, the rising cost of living and improving wages and income were the top issues on Latino voters’ minds, according to the poll. But contrary to what national trends are showing, Colorado Latinos have more faith in Democrats to address their economic concerns, President and CEO of Voces Unidas Alex Sánchez said.
“I think that’s one big difference in terms of the overall policy preferences and their perceptions about the parties and what we’ve seen for Latinos nationally,” Sánchez said. “Economic concerns has been something on the minds of Latinos for all the years we’ve been polling… and those numbers have not shifted that much over time.”
Following the 2022 election, the Latino voter exit poll found that 75% of Latino voters in the 8th District supported Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, compared to 56% this year. Sanchez said that in 2022, Caraveo was the only Latino candidate on the ballot, and because state Rep. Gabe Evans, a Latino Republican, ran against her this year, he pulled more of the Latino vote.
“Whenever Latinos see two candidates on the ballot, they essentially often split the ballot between those Latino candidates,” Sanchez said. “I think that’s the No. 1 reason why we saw that number for Caraveo drop relative to 2022.”
Abortion rights
The poll found 68% of Latino voters supported Amendment 79, which placed the right to an abortion in the Colorado Constitution. Sanchez said Latino voters in Colorado “overwhelmingly” want to see elected officials in office who protect access to abortion and contraception. Dusti Gurule, president and CEO of COLOR, attributed this to the direct engagement organizations like COLOR do with Latinos around reproductive rights, as well as the fact that elected officials talk about reproductive health care “more so than ever before in our history” after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Let’s remember that Latinos in our state are not only communicated with, or interact with candidates or parties,” Gurule said. “It’s organizations like COLOR and Voces who have been doing work for many, many years to educate, organize community, and so that is going to show up in how they answer questions and the saliency of different issues for them.”
For congressional races, 63% of Latinos favored the Democratic candidate. This includes 62% of respondents from the 3rd District — where Democrat Adam Frisch is trailing Republican Jeff Hurd, according to preliminary results — and 56% in the 8th District. Overall, Latino voters had more favorable opinions of Harris and Democrats and unfavorable opinions of Trump and Republicans.
The poll also asked respondents about whether they believe the presidential candidates and their parties care about or showed hostility toward Latinos. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they believe Harris and Democrats “care a great deal” about Latinos, 29% said they “don’t care too much,” and 6% saw them as hostile. Thirty-four percent of respondents said they believe Trump and Republicans “care a great deal” about Latinos, 39% said they “don’t care too much,” and 27% of Latinos saw them as hostile.
Of the 600 people polled, 56% identified as Democrats, 23% as Republicans, and 21% independent. One in five Latino voters in Colorado voted for the first time in a U.S. election this year.
Regarding sources of information, 52% of respondents said they use social media as their main source, while 52% also said national TV news and websites are their main sources of information.
“In Colorado, we do not track race or ethnicity of voters, and so it’s important that we are capturing and quantifying the impact that Latinas and Latino voters have in Colorado as it relates to some of the most important elections in the country and in the state,” Sánchez said.
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