First, the New York Times poll indicated that a majority of Hispanic Americans — especially those born in the United States — do not believe Trump is referring to them when he talks about the country’s immigration problems. What’s more, many agreed with Trump’s proposals, including 43% who say they support building a wall along America’s southern border and 45% who back deporting anyone living in the country illegally. This scepticism of migrants mirrors findings from a spring 2024 survey showing many American Hispanics believe the arrival of new immigrants from Latin American countries hurts the former group’s social status in the US.

This finding is particularly interesting because one issue that has long tied many Hispanics to the Democratic Party has been immigration. Barack Obama made explicit appeals during his campaigns — and, later, a strong legislative push as well — to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which was likely a major reason why he received historic backing from Hispanic Americans. In 2012, he led among the group by 71% to 27%. In 2016, Hillary Clinton picked up that mantle while Trump drove a hard anti-immigrant message that alienated many Hispanics, allowing her to basically retain Obama’s levels of support, this time with 66% to Trump’s 28%.

But in 2020, Joe Biden’s margins with Hispanics were noticeably lower. As a post-election report on the 2020 vote found, this may have been at least in part because Trump turned down the “identity knob” and instead focused on the economy, where he had an advantage. This is confirmed by the recent NYT poll, which found that Hispanics care deeply about the economy, and that they are very pessimistic about the current state of it — a troubling sign for the party in power.

Another overlooked factor is that Hispanics are more moderate than some Democrats might expect them to be. An analysis of Cooperative Election Study data from Echelon Insights’ Patrick Ruffini showed that the overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters are not ideologically extreme one way or the other, meaning more progressive immigration-related proposals such as an open borders policy or abolishing ICE are unlikely to resonate with many of them — and may even turn them off.

We also know that very few Hispanics use identifiers adopted by social justice groups such as “Latinx”, and some consider the term offensive. This cohort’s moderation is evident even among self-identified Democrats: multiple polls have found Hispanic Democrats are far less likely than white ones to call themselves “liberal”.

It remains to be seen whether the actual election results this year reflect these shifts in the polls. If they do, it could jeopardise Harris’s chance of winning crucial swing states such as Arizona and Nevada. But even if Harris matches Biden’s 2020 margins, it would still represent a decline from the Democrats’ higher levels of support under Obama and Clinton. Given Hispanic Americans’ continued growth as a share of the electorate, their importance will continue to grow in future elections too. If Democrats hope to rebound with the group, it may behove them to no longer think of Hispanics as a core part of their coalition but increasingly as a swing group — one that must be persuaded to vote for them and not taken for granted.

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Michael Baharaeen is chief political analyst at The Liberal Patriot substack.

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