Latino voters are more likely than Black voters to vote for moderate Democrat Paul Vallas in the Chicago mayoral race and less likely than white voters to support progressive Democrat Brandon Johnson, helping to keep the race neck and neck, according to a poll released Tuesday.
The poll of registered voters that was provided early to NBC News showed that 42% of Latinos who have decided how they’ll vote in the April 4 runoff support Vallas, who is white and is not Latino, compared to 24% of Black voters.
Meanwhile 31% of Latinos said they’d vote for Johnson, a progressive Democrat who is Black, compared to 40% of white voters, according to the poll conducted by BSP Research for a coalition of Latino and Black nonprofit groups and Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy. More than a quarter of Latinos are undecided.
Most of Vallas’ support is from white voters, at 49%, while 48% of Black voters said they plan to vote for Johnson.
“The wild card on April 4th is the Latino vote,” Jaime Domínguez, an associate professor of instruction at Northwestern, said in a statement. “And neither candidate appears to have a lock on this electorate. Yet, turnout will be critical given the Latino share of undecideds.”
Overall, the poll showed the runoff is tied, with each candidate getting 40% of the vote; some 20% of all voters are undecided.
When undecided voters were asked who they are leaning toward supporting, the race remained tied at 44%, with the biggest increase in votes coming from voters in the “all other” racial category.
Johnson saw the biggest increases when undecided voters with a preference were combined, gaining 7 percentage points with Black voters and 12 percentage points with voters in the “all other” race category.
‘Still outreach to do’
“We can see from the results, as far as low-income voters and minorities, there’s still outreach to do to those communities that can swing the election,” said Stephen Nuño-Perez,…
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