An aroma of Mexican pozole wafted through Maria Guadalupe “Lupe” Arreola’s spacious backyard during a warm early October evening, less than a month before Election Day.

As the sun began to set and horchata flowed freely, about two dozen Latino volunteers gathered at Arreola’s central Las Vegas home to promote Democratic candidates in a phone bank.

“For Latino citizens who can vote, your vote is very important,” Arreola told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Spanish. “It’s important that they vote, for whomever they want to, but that they vote.”

“But first, we’re going to eat delicious pozole,” Arreola said about the hominy-and-meat-based stew boiled in watery red salsa.

Democratic and Republican campaigns have dispatched staff to knock on doors and have held events throughout the valley in an effort to attract the coveted Latino vote.

They have hosted events at cafes and at a Lindo Michoacan restaurant, where in September Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown addressed upbeat Republicans at a packed section of the Mexican restaurant.

“Are you guys excited? There’s only 47 days left before Nov. 5,” Brown said that day.

“This is not my campaign for U.S. Senate,” he added. “This is our campaign for U.S. Senate.”

Demographic can prove pivotal

Three in 10 Nevada residents identify as Latino, and the demographic is estimated to account for 20 percent of the state’s total vote in the general election.

In a race of inches in a battleground state, Nevada Latinos have the potential to swing the election.

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus showed up to Arreola’s phone bank in October.

“The Latino vote is so important for our campaign,” Rosen told the Review-Journal, adding that demographic cares about the same issues as the rest of the electorate.

Rosen, who said she staffs first-generation Americans with immigrant backgrounds, complimented Arreola’s hospitality.

“We come here all the time,” she said. “We’re not just here because it’s an election year.”

Later that week, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump would appear in the Las Vegas Valley events in a push to court the Latino vote.

Harris took part in a Noticias Univision town hall of undecided Latino voters broadcast from Cox Pavilion. Trump headlined “Building America’s Future Hispanic Roundtable” in North Las Vegas.

Both parties took advantage of Hispanic Heritage Month — which conveniently falls during the outset of election seasons — to host themed events geared toward Latinos.

‘Absolute difference’

“We see the critical role that our Latino voters are playing in different elections,” UnidosUS CEO Janet Murguia told the Review-Journal this summer. “But particularly here in Nevada, they could make the absolute difference in the outcome of the presidential election.”

UnidosUS is a Latino-centered civil rights organization that also promotes civil engagement. President Joe Biden was set to address the nonpartisan nonprofit’s Las Vegas convention in July but abruptly canceled because of a COVID diagnosis. Days after, Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.

U.S. Latinos had a gross domestic product of $3.6 trillion in 2022, according to a 2024 report from Latino Donor Collaborative report sponsored by Wells Fargo and conducted by Arizona State University’s business school.

If that demographic was its own country, the figure would rank it as the fifth largest world economy, the report said.

Trump campaign gaining ground

Experts say they understand that Latinos do not exist as a monolith; polls show that they care about many of the same issues as the rest of the electorate.

The top five issues cited by Latinos surveyed, according to a pre-election poll conducted in August for UnidosUS, were: inflation, jobs, housing, immigration, and crime and gun violence, respectively.

Additional polling from August to October suggested that while the majority of Latino voters continue to lean Democratic, Trump has been cutting into that advantage in 2024.

Harris’ lead of 61.6 percent to Trump’s 35.5 percent in August had dropped to 57.6 percent to Trump’s 41.8 percent in October, according to Emerson College Polling and Nexstar Media, though it was a small sample size with a larger-than-usual margin of error. Rosen held a more comfortable lead over Brown.

Citing exit polling, CNN reported that Biden got 61 percent of the Latino vote share in 2020 compared with Trump’s 35 percent.

An analysis by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas — a nonprofit that specializes in Latin American politics and society — estimated that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took 60 percent of the Latino vote in Nevada compared with Trump’s 29 percent.

The numbers pale in comparison to former President Obama’s share of the vote, who Pew Research Center estimated got 76 percent and 70 percent of the Latino vote in Nevada in both of his campaigns.

Outreach lacking

Despite the efforts shown so far, campaigns are not doing enough to reach out to Latinos, according to UnidosUS. In September, the organization reported that just over half of the Latinos surveyed in Nevada (53 percent) said that they had not been contacted by either party this time around.

“Candidates should be redoubling their efforts to engage this decisive electorate and present concrete solutions to their top concerns — cost of living, wages and housing — to gain their confidence and earn their votes,” wrote Rafael Collazo, UnidosUS director of public affairs.

League of United Latin American Citizens CEO Juan Proaño told the Review-Journal this summer that the outreach won’t improve significantly until campaigns start promoting more Latinos to senior positions.

LULAC describes itself as the oldest and largest Latino membership civil rights organization.

“We don’t want a figurehead,” he said. “We don’t want someone who’s just at the table that doesn’t have the ability to call the shots and spend money.”

Proaño had previously worked for political campaigns.

“I’ve been in those rooms, I’ve seen how those conversations go down, and they generally don’t end well,” he said.

He said campaigns would benefit by being more transparent about their political contributions.

“They should report out Latino contributions and those contributions should go (back) into the community,” Proaño said.

Local efforts

Jaime Florez, the Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign told the Review-Journal that Democrats have a fundraising advantage, but he said it didn’t matter.

“We have the same message, and we have the best messenger, who is President Trump,” he said about the campaign’s efforts to reach all demographics.

Florez said the campaign translates all messaging to Spanish for those who speak it, but he said the message doesn’t change.

Issues like immigration and inflation, Florez said, impact all citizens the same way.

He was one of the speakers at a northwest Las Vegas Trump campaign office where Republican surrogates stumped for the presidential candidate in front of a couple dozen Latinos.

“We don’t want to get into ‘how many offices did you open; how many people did you hire; how much money did you spend,’” Florez said. “It’s not about that, it’s about the message and the message is very clear, we need to go back to the prosperity of the Trump years.”

The Harris campaign said its office in the predominantly Latino east Las Vegas has seen “record levels of enthusiasm and engagement.”

The campaign has used its local offices as “community hubs” to mobilize Latinos, hosting dinners, movie nights and bilingual events related to financial literacy.

“This first-of-its-kind program has brought in thousands of new voters since its launch in March,” the campaign said.

In late September, for example, the Harris campaign hosted a roundtable geared toward male Latino voters at a Peruvian cafe to discuss the economy.

Emilia Pablo, Nevada’s Harris-Walz campaign Latino media press secretary, said that the Biden-Harris administration has helped Latinos and that a Harris presidency would do the same.

“The Latino vote must be earned, and our campaign is putting in the work to reach Latinos in Nevada where they are and drive home the stark choice they face at the ballot box this election,” Pablo said.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.