Benjamin Neufeld
Audio By Carbonatix
Vice President Kamala Harris won Colorado with the help of nearly two-thirds of Latino voters who responded to a recent exit poll.
Although Colorado couldn’t help Harris secure the presidency, the exit poll of more than 600 Latinos who voted in the election found that the state’s largest and fastest-growing ethnic group is still solidly blue, according to survey results shared on Wednesday, November 6.
“I’m sure you’re seeing stories of Latinos moving toward Trump across the nation and in key battleground states,” Gabe Sanchez, a vice president at BSP research, said during a November 6 webinar. “It’s important to emphasize that was not the story in the state of Colorado.”
Colorado has about 1.3 million Latinos, which is almost a quarter of the state’s population. Although Latinos are often tied to the immigration debate, their desire to protect and expand abortion rights and lower the cost of living while raising wages drove them to vote for Harris in Colorado. And according to Sanchez, they “helped Harris secure Colorado.”
BSP Research and Colorado Latino Policy Agenda conducted the exit poll over the phone from October 24 to election night on November 5.
For one in five Colorado Latinos in polled, this election was their first time voting.
“Economic issues were overwhelmingly the dominant concerns on the mind of Latino voters,” Sanchez said. “Important to note is Latino voters in the state of Colorado continue to support expanding reproductive health.”
The exit poll found that 67 percent of Latinos surveyed from Colorado voted for Harris. With more than 68 Colorado Latinos in the poll saying they supported abortion, the vice president’s promise to protect reproductive rights drew more Colorado Latino voters to choose her for president, according to Sanchez. Of the Latinos polled, 58 percent said Democrats would be the best at addressing abortion rights while only 20 percent said Republicans would be better.
“Expanding reproductive health and abortion rights, that was a winner for Harris among Latinos,” Sanchez said. “Across all the other issues, there really wasn’t a meaningful or significant vote choice.”
For Trump, his stance on border security drove his Colorado Latino supporters in the poll more than any other issue. Sanchez noted that 16 percent of the Colorado Latinos in the poll who voted for Trump said they chose him for his border security stance this year despite not voting for him in 2020.
According to Sanchez, Latinos are closely split in the race for Congressional District 8, which reaches from Thornton to Greeley and is home to nearly 300,000 Latinos, who account for more than a third of the district’s population. As of Wednesday night, the race between the two Latino candidates, Democrat Yadira Caraveo and Republican Gabe Evans, was still too close to call, with Caraveo holding a narrow lead.
More than 56 percent of the Colorado Latinos from CD8 in the exit poll said they voted for Caraveo, which Sanchez said “could undoubtedly help the first Latina member of Congress keep her seat in a very competitive district.”
When asked to describe the party and candidate as hostile, neutral or caring about the Latino community, more than 64 percent polled said Harris and the Democratic Party “care a great deal,” while only 6 percent described the vice president and her party as “hostile.”
Responses about Trump and the Republican Party were more split. Almost 40 percent of those polled said Trump and his party “don’t care too much” about Latinos, while 34 percent said he and the party “care a great deal,” and about 27 percent described him as “hostile.”
Poll results may show that Latinos still largely lean left in Colorado – and state voting data backs that up – but the Latinos at JJ’s Place, an Aurora bar owned by conservative city councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, all showed up to support Trump on Tuesday night.
“It seems to me Trump has the better ideas,” Mexican immigrant Luis Hernandez told Westword on election night. “I don’t think you can fix the economy without first controlling who you let in here. How can you let everyone in here and give them money, housing for free and then expect the country to work?”
Hernandez was one of several immigrants at JJ’s who cited border policy and crime as reasons that they supported Trump and the Republican party.
“People don’t want to work hard anymore. They want to show up and have everything handed to them,” Angel Perez, another patron at JJ’s, said of undocumented immigrants in Colorado. “Us Mexicans, we’re proud hard workers, and I don’t think we should tolerate people coming here looking for shortcuts.”
