Schiff, Porter Lead New 2024 U.S. Senate Poll Focused On Latino Voters

According to a new Latino Community Foundation poll released on Wednesday, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA) currently lead the candidates in the U.S. Senate primary among Latino voters, with 40% of all Latino voters still remaining undecided.

Recent general polls for the 2024 race have generally favored both Schiff and Porter, with Schiff slowly moving into the lead in the last few months over Porter, who had previously led polls. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), once considered a top tier candidate, has eroded down in the polls throughout 2023, with the most recent polls having Republicans such as lawyer Eric Early and former baseball player Steve Garvey either passing her into third place or being close to passing her.

The big wild card in the race, if Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA) would run following the end of her caretaker term for recently passed Senator Dianne Feinstein, was also recently decided on, with Butler opting to not run in 2024. With primary day only four months away, all candidates are looking towards undecided voters for a final big boost in polling. One of the largest demographics yet to pick a candidate, Latinos, have been particularly sought after.

“Latinos don’t have a horse in the race,” said Lewis Gilbert, an elections analyst who focuses on demographic trends, to the Globe on Wednesday. “No major Latino candidate is in the race, and they already have [Senator Alex] Padilla in Washington. So interest has been low.”

40% of Latinos remain undecided in the Senate election

How low? According to the new LCF poll, a whopping 40% of Latino voters have remained undecided. Schiff, who leads the poll amongst candidates, only garnered 12% from the October poll, while Porter received only 10% and Butler, who is not running, getting 9%. Other candidates included Lee with 7%, Garvey with 6%, GOP businessman James Bradley with 4%, and Early and Sarah Sun Liew with 3%.

Overall favorability was also tight. Lee and Schiff led with 34% of respondents seeing them as favorable, followed by Porter with 33%, Garvey with 30%, and Butler with 28%. However, it should be noted that around half of the respondents said “Don’t Know” for each candidate. In addition, only 66% of respondents said that they would definitely vote in the election.

While the poll showed some general trends on par with previous polls, as well as hope for many candidates hoping to reach Latinos in California, experts noted that the poll should be taken with a grain of salt. In particular, they noted that the number of people polled (900) and figures that have been proven to be way off compared to more recent elections may put some parts of the poll into question.

“The LCF poll does do a good job in showing where, in very general terms, Latino voters are at. Many don’t know who to vote for yet, and those that do are following the trend of Schiff and Porter, although Garvey and Butler came as a surprise. Otherwise, it just wasn’t enough of a sample size to get a good beat on things. Some things, like the support Butler has in the poll, have been way off in what other polls have said too And that’s not even getting into how some of the questions were more on the leading side.

“But, looking past all that, we do see a Demographic who doesn’t seem to know where to turn. They like Biden and Padilla, but in this one they just don’t know where to go. Schiff and Porter need to know to get stronger bonds with the Latino communities. Lee really needs to drill down on that too, since she is losing to GOP candidates now. And Garvey, well, he needs to bring out his LA and San Diego support and maybe get some Latino former teammates to come out for him. If he could get someone like Fernando Valenzuela  to throw his support for him, he would win over a lot of voters, especially in LA.

“All in all, this does show where the candidates need to go from now for Latino votes.”

More polls are expected to come out later in November.