The Latino vote in Georgia, Kamala Harris’ key to the White House

Of the seven states that will define the U.S. presidential election in November, perhaps the biggest question mark is the participation of the more than 400,000 Latinos who live in Georgia. A recent survey shows that potential voters in this community are the least motivated to participate in the presidential election among the disputed states. The response of this section of the electorate could define the balance between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who are practically tied 40 days before the vote in Georgia, a vital territory for both candidates. The state has added two million new voters since the last presidential election, mainly African Americans and Hispanics.

“Georgia is critical,” says Jerry Gonzalez, CEO of Galeo, an organization that helps raise the political profile of Hispanics in the state. “The Latino vote here holds the key to the White House. That’s what we tell our electorate, that we have a lot of power,” says the activist and vote promoter. By Gonzalez’s calculations, a victory here is essential for Trump, but Harris can still lose the state and reach the 270 votes required in the Electoral College to win the presidency via other scenarios.

“The community has been abandoned for a long time by both political parties and neither party is doing the work of going out to find those voters,” explains Gonzalez, who admits that enthusiasm is low among the community weeks before the election: 56% of Latinos registered to vote in Georgia are interested in participating in the process, according to a UnidosUS survey from early September. That is the lowest number among the seven key swing states in contention. This is followed by North Carolina (58%) and Arizona (61%). Nevada, on the other hand, is the most motivated (72%).

Latino participation in local elections has grown exponentially. In the election that took Barack Obama to the White House, 78,500 Latinos out of the 145,000 registered in Georgia voted, a turnout of 53.8%. In 2020, in the process that marked the return of the Democrats to Washington after the Trump era, 205,000 Latinos voted (out of 385,000 registered). The turnout was 53.3%, a figure similar to that of 2016 and above the national figures. In 12 years, the Georgia electorate has added more than 240,000 Latinos.

The organization led by Gonzalez, which supports Harris’ candidacy, now has the task of motivating a new and less experienced electorate. The average age of potential voters indicates that they are of a millennial profile. Nearly 20% of Hispanics registered in the state have never voted in a federal election: 22% will vote for a president for the first time.

To try to motivate voters, Galeo has repeated a strategy used in 2022, a year in which Georgia had the rest of the country on tenterhooks over the runoff election for the Senate, a contest that would define who would have control of the Upper House after the midterm elections. The two candidates at the time were both African American: the Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and the former NFL player, Herschel Walker, a Republican. Neither of them had worked to reach out to this sector of the electorate, so the organization came up with the idea of launching a lottery card to promote the profile of the candidates. Warnock became “The Pastor.”

Now, La Presidenta has been released for Harris, and El Condenado (The Convict) for Trump. “No one here has normalized the Trump phenomenon because everyone is still very fresh in their minds about his first presidency, where there was chaos every day. Now he is creating noise by saying that the Haitian community is eating dogs and cats. He is crazy and extreme. We cannot normalize such horrendous behavior, because it does not reflect the values of our community in Georgia,” says Gonzalez, who claims that many Republican Latinos have turned their backs on the former president.

But history is repeating itself, as the parties have not done enough to seek out Hispanic support. Fifty-one percent of potential voters said they had not been contacted by Democrats or Republicans by the end of August. This occurs in a context in which Georgia’s Republican authorities, in control of the state Congress and local government, have made it more difficult for minorities to vote. For example, only one of the state’s 159 counties offers information in Spanish explaining to interested voters how to register to participate in the election.

This has caused organizations like Galeo to reevaluate their field work. The team began working with the community in just four counties: Hall, Dekalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett. The latter, located northeast of Atlanta, is the one with the largest Hispanic population. Four years ago, it had 71,000 people registered to vote: 56% went to the ballot box in 2020. Galeo is now focusing on 11 counties where it is attempting to enthuse those voters forgotten by both parties.

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