Vice President Kamala Harris is struggling to consolidate the Hispanic vote as much as previous Democratic presidential campaigns. A recent poll by Miami-based polling firm Bendixen & Amandi International found that 41% of Hispanic voters expressed support for former President Donald Trump, which would be the highest percentage for any Republican in 20 years. The failure to attract Hispanic voters has led the Harris campaign to throw out conventional wisdom and gamble on a new communication strategy in the campaign’s final weeks.

Hispanic voters represent an increasingly important constituency nationally in any election as their numbers increase. This November, Hispanics will comprise 15% of the electorate. Hispanics are also important constituencies in some of the closest swing states of the 2024 election, including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, the last of which has 580,000 registered Latino voters. “We don’t hold on to Nevada or Arizona or Pennsylvania, much less have a chance in Georgia, unless we turn out the Latino community for Harris,” a Democratic pollster told Politico.

The Harris campaign recognizes the importance of the Hispanic vote and has used its significant fundraising advantage to build a much larger enterprise for engaging these voters. In Pennsylvania alone, Democrats have spent nearly $2 million on Spanish-language TV ads and have 30 staffers focused on Hispanic outreach, compared to $175,000 in ads by Republicans and only one dedicated staffer.

Thus far, this significant investment has not reversed a decade-long slide in support for Democrats among Hispanics. After President Barack Obama won 71% of Hispanic voters in 2012, Hillary Clinton won 68% in 2016, and President Joe Biden won 62% in 2020. But Harris’s Hispanic support now sits in the mid-50s percent.

On one level, this appears to represent a failure of identity group-driven politics. Hispanic voters are increasingly “U.S.-born, English-speaking individuals,” writes Deseret News, and their concerns are increasingly identical to those of other Americans. This means that their top concerns are all economic — inflation, housing costs, and jobs — which is a weakness for Harris due to her role in the current administration.

Concurrently, Hispanic voters have grown less open to standard Democratic messaging to them. Democrats approached Hispanics as a distinct identity group and assumed they would be motivated by concerns specific to their group. Therefore, Democratic messaging to Hispanic voters has conventionally focused on immigration as a top issue. In particular, Democrats stressed Trump’s rhetoric against illegal immigrants and his hardline policies.

But a recent New York Times/Siena poll shows that Trump’s immigration rhetoric has not alienated Hispanic voters as Democrats supposed, for the simple reason that these assimilated Hispanics “do not believe Trump was referring to people like them,” Politico described. In fact, an Axios/Ipsos poll in April found that 40% of Hispanic voters support building a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, and 38% support deporting all illegal immigrants back to their country of origin.

In a surprising moment of self-reflection, the Harris campaign has perceived the inadequacy of conventional Democratic messaging to Hispanics and has made an effort to revise their approach. “Harris’ change in message seems to acknowledge that economic policy, not identity politics, will do more to win this group over,” mused Deseret News.

“I think what we’ve seen in previous Democratic campaigns is the only outreach to Latinos is done through the lens of immigration,” said Santiago Mayer, executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, a group focused on Generation Z. “Kamala Harris and her team aren’t just talking about immigration. When they talk to Latino communities, they’re giving a holistic message. They’re talking about abortion rights, they’re talking about the economy, they’re talking about gun violence.”

These three policy areas — abortion, economy, and guns — are the ones Harris mentioned in summarizing her platform at the recent Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute conference. The Harris campaign believes that the abortion plank will win over Hispanic women, in particular.

But every investment has its tradeoffs. “When we focus a campaign so heavily on abortion, which helps us run up the numbers with women of all colors, then that’s going to cost us in persuading Hispanic men, who don’t think we’re talking about issues they care about,” a Democratic pollster told Politico. Harris is already struggling more among Hispanic men, according to consistent polling, Politico notes.

The Harris campaign deserves credit for at least recognizing that Hispanic voters are concerned about the economy and trying to address those concerns. Its fundamental problem is that it lacks an economic agenda that contrasts with that of the Biden administration, not to mention that its candidate is still a member of the Biden administration. With the same people pursuing the same policies, it is reasonable for voters to wonder whether the results will be different.

This fundamental weakness on economic issues is why the Harris campaign has consistently returned to abortion as the one single issue they believe can win them the election. But it isn’t a particular selling point for Hispanic men, or for “faith-driven” Hispanic voters, admitted Pennsylvania state Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz (D).

Still, the Harris campaign is willing to roll the dice. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) is evangelizing Hispanic men on the issue, banking on the belief that “at its core is personal freedom, a value that attracts many immigrants to the United States,” summarized The New York Times.

The obvious counterargument is that abortion constitutes the deliberate taking of innocent human life, which is what drives many immigrants to leave their countries for the United States in the first place. If Hispanic men hold to a natural view of the family in which a husband and father is supposed to be a protector, the Harris campaign’s abortion outreach could actually turn them away from supporting her. Only time will tell which argument proves more persuasive.