Politicians, advocacy groups try to figure out how to convince young Latinos to vote in 2024

Twenty-six year-old Anais Lopez, a California voter, is getting ready to vote in her third presidential election, but she has some misgivings. 

“Young Latinos don’t feel heard,” she said. 

Lopez says she and other young Latinos are unenthusiastic about voting in this election. She said they’re feeling overlooked by campaigns, despite efforts by both Republican and Democratic groups to increase Latino outreach in recent election cycles. 

Lopez is among the almost 12 million Latinos under the age of 30 eligible to vote in November. 

“We’re grouped as one in many ways, but there’s millions of us,” Lopez said. “There tends to be this over-generalization,” Lopez said. She thinks that young Latinos are too often seen as monolithic.

In 2020 there were nearly 7 million Hispanics aged 18-24 in the U.S., and only 34% reported voting during the election that year, well behind the 48% of all 18-24 year-olds who reported voting, according to U.S. Census data. 

One in four registered Hispanic voters are expected to vote in their first presidential election this year, according to UnidosUS, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. Some states in particular could see their results affected by Latino turnout. In New Mexico, 45% of all eligible voters are Latino, according to the Pew Research Center, the highest percentage of any state. They’re the largest plurality of any racial group in the state. In Arizona, 25% of eligible voters are Latino. Both states have competitive congressional races, and candidates and groups have been focusing heavily on Latino outreach, hoping to appeal to voters like Lopez.

The Latino Community Foundation is a California-based non-profit that invests in Latino-led organizations and aims to increase Latino political participation. It has found that Latinos who are eligible to vote but don’t turn out often cite work concerns or believe their vote isn’t important. 

Christian Arana, vice president for civic power and policy for LCF, said the foundation has expanded its investment into Arizona to help local non-profits get out the vote in competitive districts. He hopes to persuade Latinos to vote by convincing them that what’s on the ballot will make a difference in their lives.

“These races are tight, and knowing that there are millions of eligible Latino votes on the table, it just goes to show that this is a this is a voter bloc that if registered, if educated on what’s on the ballot, if mobilized, that when they do turn out to vote, they are going to make the difference,” Arana said.  

“We have to give them a reason to vote,” Arana said. 

Arizona

Two battleground races that could be decided by Latino voters are in Arizona, in the 1st and 6th Congressional Districts. Both seats are currently held by Republicans.

In Arizona’s 6th District, Rep. Juan Ciscomani defeated his Democratic opponent, Kirsten Engel, by around 5,000 votes in 2022, and they could face a rematch after the primaries on July 30. Engel is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

She is trying to appeal to young voters who back abortion rights. An effort to put a measure enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution on the ballot in November is currently underway.

“Ciscomani’s record of voting for abortion restrictions and background with radical organizations like the Patriot Academy are not the representation these voters want or deserve,” Alia Kapasi, Engel’s campaign manager, said.

Ciscomani has said he’s pro-life, with exceptions for rape, incest, and protecting the life of the mother. 

In Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, Kurt Kroemer, a Democratic primary candidate running against GOP incumbent Rep. David Schweikert, said getting young voters enthused about the election would help guarantee he’d win the votes needed “to put [him] over the top.”

“When you lose hope, that’s when people throw their hands in the air and go ‘what’s the point,'” Kroemer said. 

Andrew Horne, another Democratic primary candidate in the district, said his campaign “recognizes the crucial role that young Latino voters play in shaping the future of our state and nation.”

Schweikert won his seat in 2022 by less than 3,200 votes — a margin of under 1 point — against Democratic opponent Jevin Hodge. His campaign said in this election, he’s prioritizing housing and economic issues in order to draw out Latino voters. 

“In my experience, Latino voters in my congressional district are most concerned about prosperity for their families, and I’m doing everything I [can] to promote policies that reduce inflation and encourage economic growth and prosperity,” Schweikert said.

New Mexico

Rep. Gabriel Vasquez, a Democrat, is running for reelection in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, and he, too, prevailed in his race by under a point. His district is almost 62% Hispanic. 

Like Schweikert, Yvette Herrell, Vasquez’s Republican opponent, is using its concern about the economy to try to win over young Latinos. 

“They’re tired of relentless inflation and the stagnant job market in our state, forcing them to look outside New Mexico for career opportunities,” Herrell said. “Our campaign is laser-focused on continuing our outreach to this critical voting bloc.”

Dylan McArthur, Vasquez’s campaign manager, said his background growing up in the borderlands has shaped his connection with young Latino voters in “fighting to lower costs, create good-paying jobs, and protect their reproductive freedoms.”

The Jolt Initiative, a group aiming to raise voter participation of young Latinos in Texas, thinks there are other reasons they’re not voting. 

“Latinos have generations that are lacking civic engagement, so it’s on organizations such as ourselves to make it a generational habit moving forward, so that it becomes a family like anything else that the Latino community does,” said Jackie Bastard, Jolt Initiative’s deputy director. 

She aims to bring young Latinos to the polls this November to “ensure that voting is a habit” that sticks.

While both major parties are courting Hispanic voters, young Latino voters are increasingly identifying as independent, according to UnidosUS. 

Gabriel Sanchez, executive director of the University of New Mexico’s Center for Social Policy,  found in a 2023 study that the number of eligible Hispanic voters has increased by 4.7 million since 2018, representing 62% of the total growth in the U.S. of eligible voters during this time.

He said campaigns should pay attention. 

“The huge gaps between the parties and lack of collaboration is just driving them away from party politics in general,” Sanchez said. “That has huge implications for how we think about mobilizing that segment of the population and getting them interested to vote in the first place.”