If Vice President Kamala Harris’s declining performance among traditionally Democratic voting blocs in California foreshadows trends in battleground states, her campaign could face unwelcome news come Election Day.
Only 57% of Hispanics across the Golden State backed Harris’s presidential campaign, according to a new poll conducted by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. The number marks a sharp downturn from the 75% of California Hispanics who supported President Joe Biden in 2020.
The same trend continues when looking at Asian Americans. The survey, which was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and polled 4,341 Californians this month, found that 56% of the voting block backed Harris, down from 75% who supported Biden during his presidential campaign four years ago. Meanwhile, the vice president has seen Democratic support from black voters drop by 5 percentage points since the 2020 election.
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The survey did find some good news for Harris, with data showing she has widened her margin of support among white voters by 7 percentage points since Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Still, when measuring support for the vice president’s campaign among all voters in the Golden State, she’s seen a decline of over 6 percentage points from Biden’s 2020 numbers.
While California remains a solidly blue state, should Asian Americans and Hispanics be turning to former President Donald Trump in neighboring battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada, where even a few thousand votes could change the outcome of the election, the news could sound a death knell to Harris’s presidential ambitions.
Former President Donald Trump has often argued he’s seeing gains in support from California Hispanics, commenting on the matter this week at a North Carolina rally and most recently during a campaign stop in Henderson, Nevada.
Lamenting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) move to sign a bill banning voter ID requirements in the Golden State earlier this year, Trump said that if he had a “fair” vote count, “I would do great in California,” because “Hispanics like me.”
“I’m glad that they love me. They should love me, and I love them,” Trump told Nevada supporters Thursday evening. “But I would do great if we had an honest [vote]. I always say, if God came down just for one day to be the vote counter … In other words, I would win in California.”
UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies also revealed that support for Trump among Hispanic men is particularly high, a trend which appears to be mirrored in nearby Arizona.
A recent USA Today poll found that 51% of Arizona’s Hispanic male voters between 18 to 34 years old back Trump. It also found support for Harris from Latino voters overall had declined from Biden’s 2020 numbers.
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“You’re not seeing the same kind of strong support for the Democratic ticket among Latinos,” Mark DiCamillo, who oversaw the UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies survey, told the Los Angeles Times. “That has implications for Arizona and maybe Nevada as well.”
Nevada and Arizona will be crucial for both presidential candidates to capture in order to pull off a victory come Election Day. Trump currently holds a slim edge over Harris in both battleground states, per an aggregate of polling from RealClearPolitics.
