Kamala Harris secures crucial Latino support, reaching 2020 levels.

It will make all the difference she needs.

Give me 1,000 polls from various pollsters, and give me one poll from the Pew Research Center — I’ll always choose the one from Pew. It’s enough. It’s more than enough. The numbers released by Pew have reduced my concerns about Latino support for Kamala Harris.

An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020. This represents 50% of the total growth in eligible voters during this period.

For every two voters added to the rolls in the last four years, one is a Latino voter. It goes without saying that Latinos can sway election results in presidential, statewide, and local races across the country. Their choices become even more critical in battleground states.

Whatever impact they had in 2020, we need to double it in 2024 — maybe even more. Just as their importance on the electoral scale kept rising, President Biden began losing Latino support at an alarming rate. As early as February this year, Biden’s apparent weakness with Latinos set off alarm bells within the Democratic Party.

An NBC News poll released in February 2024 showed Trump at 42% and Biden at 41%, marking a dramatic shift. From winning the Latino vote by 21 points in 2020, Biden was now trailing Trump by one point — a 22-point swing in the opposite direction.

Much of the blame lies with how Democrats approached Latino voters. They mistakenly treated Latinos as a single, homogenous group, which they are not. The Latino voter base in Arizona is vastly different from that in Texas, and Texas is different from Florida. And within Florida, there are many distinct groups.

Micro-targeting is essential. If you can’t speak to them in a way they resonate with, why should they listen? (I’m not talking about language in the literal sense, but you get my point.) Biden’s team, and Democrats in general, assumed that attacking Trump on immigration and highlighting his character flaws would suffice.

It didn’t.

The one issue that can truly mobilize the entire Latino base is the economy. Immigration and other topics might make a small difference at the margins, but they can’t move the needle on their own. This is something the Biden team never fully understood. Unless they close the gap with Trump on economic issues, they risk losing Latino voters.

From the start, Kamala Harris grasped this nuance. She initially went on the offensive regarding immigration. After establishing her stance — that she wouldn’t back down under attack — she quickly shifted gears and focused on the future of the economy.

Instead of dwelling on the past or defending the Biden-Harris administration, she began talking about what she plans to do as President of the United States. She has concentrated on four key areas.

• Lower taxes for families by expanding the child tax credit.

• Reduce grocery costs by ending price gouging.

• Incentivize home buying by offering down payment assistance.

• Support small businesses by increasing the tax deduction from $5,000 to $50,000.

These measures will benefit countless Americans in the middle and lower income brackets, including many Latinos who are still grappling with inflation and an economy that has yet to fully recover from the impact of COVID-19.

One aspect of that plan — her housing policy — is a “brilliant” way to target Latinos, said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant.

“How do you have a Latino housing plan without saying it’s a Latino housing plan?” Madrid, author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy,” told Politico. “The answer, and they nailed this masterfully, was by saying this housing plan is specifically targeted to those that have never owned a home or come from homeowners in their families.” That policy, Madrid added, will overwhelmingly benefit Latinos.

The key to winning over the Latino coalition was actually straightforward: winning the economic argument first. This logic was completely overlooked by the Biden campaign, which failed to recognize the need for a different strategy from 2024 to 2028. If you keep insisting that what’s been done so far is good, while people aren’t really feeling it, you’re essentially telling them their lives will continue as they have for the past four years.

Harris recognized this gap. She also understood that constantly talking about immigration and Trump wasn’t going to make a difference. It needed to be about the present. It needed to be about the voters. It needed to be about the economy. As she began closing the economic gap with Donald Trump, Latino support for her has now reached Biden’s 2020 levels.

According to a Pew Research poll published two days ago, Kamala Harris holds an 18-point advantage — a three-point drop from 2020, but still far better than where Biden stood earlier this year. Plus, she still has 4% of undecided voters to focus on.

The good news for Democrats is that Kamala Harris has discarded their outdated playbook. She has a plan and isn’t afraid to take the spotlight to explain it to voters across the country. For reasons unknown, the Biden campaign never attempted to communicate what they plan to do in the next four years. They had a clear agenda in 2020, promising to build back better. But what’s their plan for 2024? I have no idea. Do you?

That’s the problem and the weakness. Attacking Trump won’t suffice because he’s not the one in power. Harris understands this nuance. She needs to drive Trump’s support among Latinos down to the mid-30s, which is achievable — he’s only two points away from that critical number.

With just 38 days left and the Trump campaign still struggling to present a strong economic plan, driving Trump’s support among Latinos to 35% is well within Kamala Harris’s reach.

I was initially very concerned about her weakness in Arizona, particularly due to the state’s sizable Latino population. If she is trailing there, the odds are higher that she will also trail in other states with significant Latino communities. However, Pew Research indicates that Harris’s trendline among Latino voters is rising. Expect Arizona to gradually lean more towards Kamala Harris.