GEOFF BENNETT: In the month that Vice President Harris has led the Democratic ticket, she has seen a surge in support with Latino voters up from where President Biden had been polling.

AMNA NAWAZ: But Harris and the Democratic Party still have work to do to motivate these voters who are critical to a winning coalition.

To discuss that work, we are joined by Maria Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino.

Welcome back to the "News Hour."

Thanks for being here.

MARIA TERESA KUMAR, Founder and Executive Director, Voto Latino: Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So there's been a little bit of a reset with Latino voters in just the last month.

And your own polling from Voto Latino shows that Kamala Harris has 60 percent support in polls.

That's up from Biden's 47 percent in April.

There's another Equis poll that shows that Harris is up 19 points in battleground states, when Biden led by just five.

What are you attributing that shift to?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: One is, is that she has been cultivating a lot of young Latinos since her president -- she ascended into her vice presidency.

So people are very familiar with who she is.

The biggest challenge, though, is that they like her, but they want to get to know her better.

But the poll -- what was really fascinating to us, the poll was with GQR.

It was 2,000 Latino voters in key battleground states.

And the biggest takeaway was not only was Kamala leading among the Democrats, but she was taking away roughly 17 points away from Kennedy.

And believe it or not, she was also taking away from Trump.

He is now -- so if you -- a head-to-head today, Trump right now is at 29 percent versus, with Biden, he was at 38 percent.

GEOFF BENNETT: And it's the younger voters, the younger Latino voters that account for that?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Disproportionally, yes, and Latino women.

GEOFF BENNETT: Wow.

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: So, to give you an idea, since he was -- since there was a changing of the guard, at Voto Latino, we had registered 36,000 individual voters.

As of today, we have registered over 100,000.

We're -- 65 percent of them are under the age of 25.

I have been doing this, Amna, for 20 -- Amna and Geoff, for 25 -- 20 years.

I have never seen anything like it.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, she -- we should also note, she's at 60 percent in your latest poll, right?

But Biden in the last election was at 65 percent.

So she's still polling behind where he was.

Where is the gap?

Why are Dems having trouble shoring that up?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Because we haven't had the convention.

I will tell you... AMNA NAWAZ: This is going to be the difference maker?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Because, in August of 2020, Biden was at 50.

So we don't see the surge of enthusiasm until post-convention, after Labor Day, when all of a sudden Americans are going back to school, going really back to work, paying attention.

And for whatever reason, she has captured our imagination.

There is an opportunity for the Democrats to cement states, even like Arizona, where Biden went by 10,000 registered voters.

Kamala Harris has the opportunity to capture the 163,000 Latino youth that have turned 18 since Biden was elected.

GEOFF BENNETT: There was a pretty significant ad buy we saw from the Harris campaign a couple of weeks ago that was focused on Latino voters.

And she really leaned into her personal story, talking about the fact that she is the daughter of immigrants and really trying to make inroads with that community based on her identity and personal story.

How resonant is that?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: When Biden -- joined the Biden campaign last time, she gave him a 15-point lift just on that story alone.

And because she was the mother -- she was the daughter of an immigrant single mother, it's really resonates.

What they're going to ask her next, though, is, what are you going to do differently than Biden did for us?

The biggest challenge Biden has had with the Latino community is communicating how he has changed their everyday.

They were skeptical.

With her on top of the ticket now, they're very open to what is the possibility for an extended - - possibility with an extended four-year term.

AMNA NAWAZ: There has been this sort of long-term trend, though, weakening of enthusiasm among Latino voters, who we should underscore here are not a monolith, right?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Right.

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes.

But there has been really since Obama a weakening presidential election by election.

What do you attribute that to?

And what do you want to see from Harris and Walz that could possibly reverse that trend?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: So what we have found is that the way Latinos vote isn't that they're trending to the Republicans, is that they're not enthusiastic necessarily, so they stay home.

So what they want to be able to demonstrate is that not only is there a vision for the present, but also for the future.

The more that the Harris, the Harris/Walz campaign can talk about economy, small business, that she, yes, is for small business capitalism, because there's so many young Latinos and Latinos in general that are entrepreneurs, that will penetrate in action, sound, letter, because the Republicans have been trying to pick people off and say, well, the Democrats are anti-business.

She says, no, I'm small business capitalist.

That will all of a sudden open up a whole different conversation.

GEOFF BENNETT: We should say the convention has gaveled into session, and we should apologize for talking through the national anthem, but this timing is sort of out of our control.

The Harris/Walz campaign has said that they see multiple paths to election through the blue wall, but also through the Sun Belt states, Arizona, Nevada in large part because of the large number of Latino voters.

Are there other states where -- other states that might now be in play because of a similar population?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: I would say that there is an opportunity even in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but perhaps not for the top of the ticket, but in growing the electoral base.

You have the potential Senate pickup in a place like Texas because of the volume of young people that are anxious now to jump in the game, but there has to be a real strategic investment there.

AMNA NAWAZ: There is, of course, the key issue of immigration that we know is really resonant, particularly with some majority Latino populations in border communities, where we saw many of them actually go for Trump in the last election.

How should this ticket message on this issue that has bedeviled the Biden/Harris administration?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Well, I think we saw it when the vice president went down to Central America and convinced business to go to the root of the problem and start creating investments.

The more that she couches what is happening at the border as a Western Hemispheric issue and that we need more people involved, not just government, but our Canadian friends, our Mexican friends, our Colombian friends, for example, and great business, then we could have a conversation with the American people of, how do you actually talk about the undocumented people that have been here for 20, 30 years?

What the president did in June, where he provided and granted authority to stay for spouses of undocumented immigrants goes a long way.

That was roughly two million family households that were impacted.

There is now a narrative of, we have to fix the border, we have to be tough on it, but we do have pathways to safeguard the folks that are already here.

AMNA NAWAZ: Maria Teresa Kumar... GEOFF BENNETT: Maria Teresa Kumar... (LAUGHTER) AMNA NAWAZ: ... we would love to both thank you.

(LAUGHTER) MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Always good to see you here.

Thanks for being here.

GEOFF BENNETT: Appreciate it.

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Thank you.