More Latinos are considering voting for a third-party candidate in the upcoming presidential election, a new poll by Voto Latino finds. According to the survey, a fifth of Latino voters are considering voting for a candidate other than President Biden or former President Trump. The poll, conducted by Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, surveyed 2,000 Latino voters registered in swing states such as Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
When choosing between the two leading candidates, 59% picked Biden, a Democrat, and 39% selected Trump, a Republican. But when candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
, Cornel West and Jill Stein were included in the question, the support for Biden saw a larger decline. While Trump’s support dropped by 5 points, to 34%, Biden’s previous 59% dropped to 47%. The civic engagement organization’s poll indicates that Latino voters aren’t turning away from the Democratic Party and moving toward the Republican Party, but rather that more of them are open to the idea of electing a third-party candidate.
In presidential elections, the Latino vote has typically gone to the Democratic candidate. In 2020, President Biden received a majority with 59% of Latinos’ votes; in 2016, Hillary Clinton received 66%; and in 2012, Barack Obama received 71% of the Latino vote. Of this year’s candidates from other parties, Kennedy, an independent, had the biggest share of likely Latino voters, with 12% of respondents saying they’d consider.
