In the final weeks before the 2020 election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s campaigns made an urgent push to woo Latino voters into their respective corners. Trump dropped an ad targeting Latino voters in Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, while Biden announced that he would form a task force on Day One to find the parents of some 500 unaccompanied children who remained separated from their families following Trump’s immigration crackdown. Biden’s announcement was accompanied by a digital ad highlighting Trump’s “inhumane” treatment of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Biden ultimately won 59% of the Latino vote in 2020 to Trump’s 38%, but his 21-point margin was a significant downgrade from Hillary Clinton’s 38-point margin in 2016. Trump also fell just 2 points shy of the GOP’s high-water mark with Latinos in 2004, when George W. Bush won 40% of the group.
But national polling and voting samples of Latinos—a particularly complex group of voters—can obscure what actually happened in any given cycle. Even though Trump consolidated support among Latinos in Florida and Texas (two states he won handily), Biden’s strength among Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada helped ensure his 2020 victory.
This cycle, some polling of Latino voters suggests Biden’s relative strength with the group has softened since 2020, though traditional polling outlets have proven notoriously bad at surveying the cohort. One example: a recent New York Times/Siena poll showing Trump gaining on Biden among Latinos—97% of whom were interviewed in English.
Wherever the truth lies in the numbers, the Biden campaign isn’t leaving anything to chance.
Instead of a last-minute October onslaught, the Biden campaign launched its Latino outreach strategy, dubbed “Latinos con Biden-Harris,” in mid-March with a campaign swing through Arizona and Nevada.
Biden simultaneously dropped an ad called “One Choice”—part of an early $30 million ad buy—targeting Latino voters in English, Spanglish (“One Opción”), and Spanish (“Una Opción”). The ad touts Biden’s policy capping insulin at $35 for seniors and his support for a woman’s right to choose.
Biden’s focus on Arizona and Nevada is also strategic. Not only were the many Mexican American voters in the states essential to his 2020 victory, Arizona and Nevada are home to the largest population of Latino residents of the five chief swing states, at 31% and 29%, respectively.
“This is not parachuting into any community two weeks before the election,” California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Biden campaign advisory member, told Vox’s Christian Paz. “We’re starting months and months and months even before the Democratic convention this summer, to get the message out.”
The Biden campaign’s early clarity about the president’s potential challenges with the cohort is promising.
“I need you badly,” Biden told Latino voters during his kickoff at the Mexican restaurant El Portal in downtown Phoenix.
Meanwhile, Trump appears to be waiting for October to turn on the afterburners in those two key swing states. He’s not visiting them, he’s not opening field offices, and he’s not making ad buys to court the Latino constituency, according to Paz’s reporting.
Even as polling suggests Republicans might have an opening to exploit, Paz writes, “the Republican Party seems unable, or unwilling, to seize the opportunity they have in swing states to lock up support from America’s newest swing voters.”
So while Trump is busily telling Nikki Haley voters and donors that he doesn’t need or want them, he also isn’t showing any interest in courting working-class Latinos who might help replenish his coalition.
Kerry and Markos talk about Florida, its strict abortion ban, and Democratic challengers’ chances in the Sunshine State.
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