California Representative Robert Garcia, who co-chaired Kamala Harris‘ campaign, has shared his thoughts on why she didn’t secure a greater proportion of the Latino vote in the presidential election.
Despite winning a larger proportion of the Hispanic/Latino vote than Donald Trump, Harris lost ground compared to Biden’s win in 2020, and only secured 6 percentage points more support than Trump did, according to a CNN exit poll.
Garcia had appeared on CNN’s The Lead and was asked by host Jake Tapper how he “personally” got it so wrong after he told NPR on election day that he thought Harris would win the Latino vote “overwhelmingly.”
Garcia said, “There’s a lot of work to do in the Latino community. I think myself, a lot of other Latinos across the country, thought the vice president was going to win the Latino vote. She obviously did win it but the fact that we lost, particularly amongst Latino men, so much support, I think is a challenge.”
Garcia added that the Democratic Party has to “be on the ground, we have to listen, and have to recognize as a party that working-class issues, issues that appeal directly to people that are working out in the community, out across the country, we have got to do more to support that work.”
He also said that the party needed to do a “much better job of messaging what we’re actually doing.”
In August, polls showed that Harris was gaining support from the Latino community, but by the start of October her lead was beginning to decline, dropping to a lower level than that secured by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Harris’ lead among male Latino voters was only 3 percentage points on election day, although she won Latina women voters by 22 points, voting data from the Associated Press showed.
Garcia concluded that there was a “lot of work” to be done, but that he was still “proud” of Harris and the campaign she ran.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP
Newsweek has contacted the press office of Garcia and the Harris campaign via email for comment.
Since Trump secured enough electoral college votes to become America’s 47th president, a number of high-profile figures have weighed in on why the Democratic Party was unable to get enough votes in the election.
The former chair of the Democratic National Committee spoke out about the need for the party focusing on grassroots support and spending more time working with local communities.
The head of a workers union also raised a similar issue, saying that Harris’ campaign didn’t listen to a major concern of American workers, which he said was inflation.
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