By Suzanne Gamboa -
NBC News
A tracking survey of Latino registered voters shows an unprecedented rise in abortion as a top concern, though it remains behind cost-of-living increases and inflation.
The follow-up poll, in its sixth year, shows that almost half, 48%, of the 400 Latinos surveyed nationally chose the rising cost of living as the number one issue Congress and the president need to address.
Women's reproductive and abortion rights were the top concern for 28% of respondents
in the survey commissioned by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund.
People in front of ballot boxes to vote in the United States. Hill Street Studios / Getty Images
That's more than the 4% of Latinos who named it as a top issue at the same point in the survey before the 2018 midterm elections, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO education fund.
Only 4% of Latinos in the new survey said they favor limiting or banning abortion.
Addressing mass shootings and gun violence and improving wages and jobs were the third most frequently mentioned concern, with each earning a mention by a quarter of registered voters.
“What we see here is that Latinos are very concerned about their quality of life
when they consider who they are going to vote for and how they are going to vote,” Vargas said.
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Although immigration remained in the top 10 concerns, it was the eighth most mentioned.
Addressing COVID-19, which has disproportionately killed and sickened Latinos and affected their jobs and economy, was the ninth.
In 2020 it was always the number one topic, added Vargas.
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The executive director reported that both parties need to tune in on issues that rank as top concerns.
"Cost of living and inflation are really top priorities and then there are these other issues...voting rights, abortion and gun safety are also very important."
In a separate question, 84% of Latinos surveyed said they strongly support or support the passage of a new voting rights law.
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The poll was conducted by BSP Research, one of whose co-founders conducted polling for the Biden Administration.
The polling firm will survey voters for the next nine weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
Other polls among Latinos also show growing concern about abortion rights.
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A survey of 2,750 Latinos — 2,540 were registered to vote and 210 were not but eligible to vote — showed that 19% ranked abortion as one of the top three issues elected officials should address.
It was the fifth most mentioned, with gun violence as number two.
This figure is higher than the 3% surveyed in 2020.
Like the NALEO survey, inflation and rising cost of living was the top concern, cited by nearly half of Latinos in the survey, also conducted by BSP Research for UnidosUS and MiFamilia Vota, two advocacy groups. of the Latinos.
Last month, Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster and director of Bendixen and Amandi, said his polls showed
Latinos favoring keeping abortion legal by wide margins in key battleground states
: 30 points in Arizona, 40 points in Nevada and 41 points in Pennsylvania.
These states have competitive races for the governorship and the United States Senate this year.
Amandi then asserted that those margins indicated that the GOP had overreached on the abortion issue, particularly GOP leaders' support for overturning Roe v.
Wade and the enforcement of strict abortion bans in Republican-ruled states.
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Some GOP candidates have retracted their support for an outright abortion ban, qualifying their positions by saying they only support restrictions, as GOP pollsters have warned it could hurt GOP candidates in competitive races. , as reported by NBC News this week.
The Wall Street Journal reported in its political bulletin that its mid-August poll showed Hispanic women had shifted 15 points toward Democrats, which it attributed to abortion decisions.
A gap between the issues and the party they support?
BSP pollster and analyst Stephen Nuño noted that the tracking poll showed a stark gap between the most progressive policies Latinos say they support and who they are willing to support in Congress.
“When you look at the policies that we are asking Latinos, it is a strongly progressive agenda,” Nuño said.
“If we look at support for the Democrats, there is a gap there.
Latinos look for solutions to these progressive issues, but they don't necessarily link them to the Democratic Party.
”
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Along with inflation, abortion, improving wages, and gun violence, lowering health care prices were the top five most pressing issues mentioned.
However, the survey showed that only half, 52%, of Latinos surveyed said they would vote for a Democratic candidate for Congress in their district, while 35% said they would support the Republican.
At the same point in 2018, just 22% said they would support a Republican.
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The GOP and its candidates are hitting President Joe Biden hard when it comes to inflation and the economy, which were prominent issues for former President Donald Trump in boosting his share of the Latino vote in 2020.
About 30% of Latinos reported that they are doing worse financially than they were two years ago.
However, inflation has been showing signs of slowing down.
Gasoline prices in August fell below $4 for the first time in months.
In the case of the Senate elections in their state, 50% said they would support the Democratic candidate.
As for disclosure, "there is still work to be done"
58% of those surveyed gave President Biden a very favorable or favorable rating, compared to 38% for Trump, which is lower, but a margin that in some elections may be large enough to obtain victories.
Half (51%) of Latinos surveyed have not been contacted by a party, campaign, or other organization to register to vote.
Of those who were contacted, 57% found out from the Democratic Party, 34% from Republicans and 22% from someone else.
That's a slight improvement on NALEO's first follow-up poll from the 2018 midterms, when 58% said they had not been contacted.
Of those contacted that year, 51% heard from Democrats, 28% from Republicans and 14% from a nonprofit, said Rosalind Gold, director of public policy for NALEO.
But much more commitment is needed, Vargas said.
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“One in two Latinos has been contacted,
one in two has not, so I think there is still work to be done by the political parties,” Vargas said.
“It seems like they are doing better this election cycle than they have in previous ones,” Vargas said.
"We want to see if this is going to hold and if in the next nine weeks we see an increase in the number of Latinos who say they have been contacted."
NALEO has projected that 11.61 million Latinos will vote in 2022, similar to the record midterm turnout of 2018.
