Four in five Latinos say they're used as 'political pawns' by politicians, survey shows

Four in five Latinos believe politicians don't really care about them and use them as "political pawns" while trying to advance their causes, a new study shows.

The figure comes from a new Axios Vibes survey, which questioned members of the demographic on a range of issues, including whether they feel motivated to vote in the November elections and for whom.

In an event held by the outlet to present the results, conservative political analyst Alfonso Aguilar said that "the era of pandering to Latinos is over." "We have a much more sophisticated Hispanic electorate, and they want to hear about ideas."

Both campaigns have taken different approaches to engaging with the demographic, with Biden investing tens of millions in ads and other efforts to reach out. In fact, on Wednesday he was set to speak at an event held by UnidosUS, the group's largest civil rights and advocacy organization, but cancelled last minute after testing positive for Covid.

The Trump campaign has invested fewer resources, but polls and analyses show he has made gains with the demographic nonetheless. An often cited A New York Times/Siena College poll found that Biden had only a 1% lead over Trump among this demographic, with 47% and 46% respectively.

Newsweek recently reported that if those numbers were to be similar come election day, Trump would surpass Richard Nixon's as the Republican with the biggest share of Latino votes in history. Nixon received 40 percent of the Latino vote in 1972, just 7 years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act granted suffrage rights to Hispanic voters and other ethnic minorities.

And Trump supporters are more motivated than Democrats to cast their ballots. Another annex of the Axios survey showed that more Latino Republicans assert they will head to the polls in November compared to their Democratic counterparts.

The data comes from a nationally representative sample of over 2,000 U.S. adults conducted online from July-10-12, in which 587 individuals identified as Latinos and 502 as Latino voters.

From those respondents, 86% of Latino Republicans said they will vote ahead of November, compared to 71% of Democrats who said the same thing. Similarly, 54% of Independent voters confirmed they will also cast their ballots.

One of the reasons for these trends is that Latino Republicans tend to believe and connect with their candidate and are also inspired by a drive to improve their personal economic status.

The latter issue aligns with a growing body of literature that shows Latinos place the economy and inflation as their top priority ahead of this year's elections. Latino Republicans add border security and crime to that list, while Latino Democrats follow it with climate change and abortion, according to the survey.