Donald Trump — who has pledged to carry out the largest migrant deportation in U.S. history — is striking a decidedly different tune in his advertising to court Latino voters: an upbeat video montage of the former president dancing set to salsa music.
The 31-second compilation of the Republican nominee pumping his fists to a catchy tune with its Spanish lyrics tweaked to decry Kamala Harris shows how intently campaigns are courting Latinos. Some of Harris’ ads depict the Democrat in front of a Puerto Rican flag and chatting with a cook at a Mexican restaurant.
Speaking to Latinos directly in Spanish has shifted from being a minor part of both parties’ messaging strategies to a significant focus. The percentage of presidential election ads running on Spanish-language television and radio stations hit a record this year, jumping to 25% of Nevada’s presidential ads from 10% in 2020 and rising to 15% from 11% in Arizona, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
The spike in all election-related ads running on Spanish-language outlets is most acute in Nevada as well, where spending is up 724% from 2020 and Arizona up by roughly 38% from four years ago. These record ad dollars in Arizona and Nevada, where roughly one in five voters identifies as Latino, illustrate the stakes as the GOP seeks to flip these crucial swing states while Democrats strive to maintain a key voter bloc that, polls show, has been drifting away from them.
Democratic spending in particular is largely behind the advertising surge, with a combined outlay of $41 million in the two states, more than double the amount in 2020. And the ads themselves are increasingly shifting beyond immigration to focus on issues such as the cost of living.
“Latinos are moving from being a racially or ethnically identified voter to an economic pocket book voter,” said Mike Madrid, author of “The Latino Century” and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a conservative group that opposes Trump. “They’re voting along class lines far more than they’re voting on racial or ethnic lines.”
The group now makes up a record 14.7% of the electorate, according to a Pew Research Center study. Meanwhile, support for Harris among likely Latino voters is below that of the past three Democratic presidential candidates, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows.
The vice president can’t afford to lose votes, especially as other typically Democratic blocs, such as Black men, are showing signs of flagging support. In the battleground states, including Arizona and Nevada, polling averages show the former president holding a narrow lead over Harris, who would be the first Black and Asian woman to win the White House.
Even small shifts among Latinos could have significant impacts. In 2020, President Joe Biden won Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes. In Nevada, Biden bested Trump by about 2.4 percentage points.
“Both of these states have a substantial percentage of Latino voters that can make a difference in the election,” said Emmanuelle Leal-Santillan, a spokesperson for Somos PAC. That group is spending $8 million in support of the Harris campaign, while its sister political action committee will commit another $7 million in bilingual voter mobilization efforts. The two groups spent a combined $5.3 million on these efforts in 2020.
Arizona and Nevada also are home to competitive races for U.S. Senate and measures to enshrine the right to an abortion in the states’ constitutions, which too are driving ads.
For campaigns backing Harris and Trump, many of the ads touch on the economy. That topped the concerns of Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada while immigration was a distant second in a poll released Oct. 7 by USA Today/Suffolk University.
“I know prices are still too high, and we have to deal with it,” Harris said during a Univision town hall on Oct. 10. Her campaign said that its investments in Latino media nationally, including $3 million in radio ads for Hispanic Heritage Month alone, are among the largest for a presidential race.
Her ads in Spanish include those touting her background as a daughter of an immigrant mother and work as California’s attorney general. They stress that she will continue fighting for middle-class families and that Trump will turn back progress.
On Friday, her campaign unveiled a new ad, part of a $370 million investment in TV and digital reservations until Election Day, which features Spanish subtitles over a video of singer Marc Anthony talking about how Trump as president called Puerto Rico “dirty and poor.”
The Trump campaign is largely treating Latino voters the same as other groups by highlighting the Republican’s core message about border security and inflation, said Jaime Florez, who leads the campaign’s Hispanic communications operation. Spanish-language ads blame Harris for higher prices and say that Trump will improve the economy.
“Before, the Republican Party wasn’t there,” said Michael McDonald, chair of the Nevada Republican Party. “So now we’re in the language, speaking the language. We have people that are Republicans, Hispanics that are Republican, talking to Hispanics coming in.”
On the stump, the Republican nominee says that cracking down on undocumented immigrants will help Latino and Black communities. “I want a lot of people to come into our country, but I want them to come in legally,” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday.
Latinos in Arizona said they’ve noticed the Spanish-language ads — and appreciate the outreach.
“I think that even though a lot of us speak English, when we see ads in Spanish, it still makes you feel like, hey, we are being noticed,” said Sady Ramos Flynn, a 44-year-old Trump supporter who’s originally from Colombia and who now lives in Scottsdale. “We’re being counted on.”
Beyond ads, campaigns are spending prodigious amounts to turn out Latinos. CHC Bold PAC, the fundraising arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has spent $1.2 million in Arizona targeting Latinas, its largest-ever investment in the state, said Victoria McGroary, the group’s executive director.
In an initiative dubbed “Hombres con Harris,” the vice president’s campaign officials are enlisting celebrities such as Jaime Camil and Aaron Dominguez to stump throughout Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, hitting up places such as sports bars and cookouts to appeal to Latino men.
The campaign’s East Las Vegas office, which focuses on the Latino community in the city, has held bilingual financial literacy workshops, community dinners, and family movie nights.
“Our campaign believes that the Latino vote must be earned,” said Emilia Pablo, a Harris campaign spokesperson.
Conservative campaigns are tailoring their messages as well. The “secret weapon” for Bienvenido, a Trump-supporting group, are English- and Spanish-language scratch-off tickets claiming that the Democratic Party supports paganism and open borders, which canvassers are placing on doors in Arizona. They help his group engage Latinos who are turned off by typical campaign advertisements, said Abraham Enriquez, president of Bienvenido, whose Arizona investment through a nonprofit and political action committee is triple what it was in 2020.
Whether these voters turn up — and for who — is a key focus.
“The most dangerous trap people fall into is treating Latinos as a monolith,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, the first Latino to hold the office. “We’re anything but. We are liberals and conservatives. We are progressives and extremists.”
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(With assistance from Amanda Albright, Gregory Korte and Mark Niquette.)
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