Latinx voters are more likely than Latinx voters to vote for moderate Democrat Paul Vallas in the race for Chicago mayor and less likely than white voters to support progressive Democrat Brandon Johnson, according to a poll released Tuesday.
A poll of registered voters provided early to NBC News showed that 42% of Latinos who have decided how they will vote in the April 4 runoff support Vallas, compared to 24% of black voters who are white and not Latino. Is.
According to a poll conducted by BSP Research for the Coalition of Latino and Black Nonprofit Groups and Northwestern University’s Center, 31% of Latinos said they support Johnson, a progressive Democrat who is black, compared to 40% of white voters. Will vote for The study of diversity and democracy. More than a quarter of Latinos are undecided.
Most of Vallas’ support came from white voters, at 49%, while 48% of black voters said they planned to vote for Johnson.
“The wild card on April 4 is the Latino vote,” Jaime Dominguez, an associate professor of education at Northwestern, said in a statement. “Neither candidate locks onto this voter. Still, the turnout will be significant given the undecided portion of Latinos.
Overall, polling showed the runoff to be equal, with each candidate receiving 40% of the vote; Some 20% of all voters are undecided.
When undecided voters were asked who they were leaning towards, race remained tied at 44%, with the largest increase in votes coming from voters in the “all other” racial category.
Johnson saw the largest increase when undecided voters were combined with a preference, gaining 7 percentage points with black voters and 12 percentage points with voters in the “all other” race category.
‘Yet to do outreach’
“We can see from the results that, as far as low-income voters and minorities, there is still outreach to those communities that can swing the election,” said Stephen Nuno-Perez, an analyst and pollster with BSP Research. “
Nearly half of Latino and half of black voters said they had not been contacted to vote.
The issue of race is a defining factor in a tight runoff election in one of the most segregated cities in the country.
According to a Brookings analysis, the city saw a racial divide in the primary, with Johnson leading Latino districts over Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill. Society, a liberal think tank. Johnson did well in parts of the city with a mix of ethnic groups and white progressives.
The runoff followed a nine-way primary in which the lead traded several times before Vallas and Johnson finished as the top two vote-getters. But since neither party won a majority in the February primary, the race has to be decided in a runoff.
Garcia, the primary’s only Latino candidate, was initially the favorite but finished fourth. Chicago has never had a Latino mayor.
According to the election results, one factor in the runoff is confusion about Vallas’ ethnic roots. More than a third of Latinos polled said they thought Vallas, the grandson of Greek immigrants, was Latino. In Spanish, with the double “el” pronounced as in “y”, vallus can mean a fence or barrier.
In the poll, 76%, more than 3 out of 4 Latinos, said they were more likely to vote for a Latino candidate than for a non-Latino candidate running for the same office if they had the same qualifications.
However, nearly three-quarters of Latino and 71% of black voters said their community was better off if black people and Latinos worked together.
A similar majority of black voters and Latinos thought they had a great deal or a fair amount in common with each other when it came to government, elections, and politics.
But while about 68% of white voters thought they and Latinos had a lot or a fair amount in those categories, only 54% of Latinos thought so.
The poll of 1,500 people, conducted March 15-23, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8%, though the margin of error is larger for each specific racial or ethnic group.
Black and Latino leaders clashed in 2020 over redistricting. This could open a door for Vallas with Latino voters, but Latinos who support Garcia want to stick with a progressive in the race, which is Johnson.
Mayra Lopez-Zuniga, the political strategist for Mizente PAC, said, “With such a tight race, we needed to come in and work the ground and move Latino voters, especially in the southwest (of Chicago) where Chu got their support.” who is endorsing Johnson in the race.
In the primary, Garcia was the only candidate to spend at least $118,000 on Spanish-language advertising. While many Latino voters speak English, the latest census data showed that approximately 35% of Chicago households do not speak English at home. Spanish is the second most common language spoken in Chicago.
Vallas spent $158,557 on Spanish-language advertising or 3.1% of the $5.1 million spent on ads since the start of the runoff. Johnson has spent $73,930 of the $2.75 million, which is about 2.7%. This includes expenditure on television, radio, and digital communication.
In southwest Chicago, the organization La Casa Norte is working with the Hispanic Federation to get Latino voters out and register youth voters.
The group also launched public service announcements with the Illinois Latino Agenda to promote its VoteChicago campaign, said Luis Gutierrez, who is co-chair of the Illinois Latino Agenda.