Hispanic voters could be key to Trump’s reelection in Florida
MIAMI (AP) — Brimming with raw energy, a group of Republican activists gathered at a former patio furniture showroom last week to hear a dire warning from a conservative group fighting to overturn a Trumped-up election.
“Hispanics are not Democrats,” speaker Robert Scott thundered before admonishing the crowd to echo his Spanish refrain: “Viva Donald Trump!” In one of the closest states in the U.S. presidential race, the visiting Californian told fellow Republicans that stories of a “blue wave” boosting Joe Biden were overblown. Hispanic voters in Florida, Scott insisted, were motivated — and would siege on Miami in droves to reelect the president.
“They love Trump!” Scott said of Hispanic voters, a perhaps surprising message for a community that has been courted, until recently, by mostly Democratic candidates. But local Hispanics, who have endured months of pandemic, unrest and storm, say his message — as well as the president’s — about what was important to them seems to be hitting its mark.
It isn’t just in Florida where that message could spell trouble for Biden, though. There are signs of Hispanic enthusiasm and possibly creeping GOP strength in one of the biggest prizes on the electoral map: Pennsylvania. They make up a critical voting bloc that could make or break his presidential aspirations.
Hispanic voters now make up the largest minority group in the electorate, nationwide and in several battleground states as well, crossing the threshold of a voting bloc to a powerful force to sway the presidential race in a handful of key states.
In Pennsylvania, for example, where President Donald Trump won by a slim margin in 2016, and the latest polls show the race between Trump and Biden tied, both campaigns have indicated that the state’s 700,000 Latino voters are up for grabs. Efforts by Democrats to appeal are matched by Republicans, who are targeting those voters as part of a broader strategy to energize Hispanic supporters across the country.
In Pennsylvania this year, Trump’s campaign has opened 13 offices in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, has launched Spanish-language ads on radio and television stations, and launched his “Latinos for Trump” program with an emphasis on faith, family and opportunity that mirrors the cultural values that have long resonated with many Hispanics.
Democrats insist Hispanic support remains strong, largely because there is so much antipathy toward Trump among the younger Latino population.
But the president’s campaign claims the Democrats are failing to understand the “diversity” of the Hispanic community. Far from a monolithic voting bloc, Hispanic Americans of any again, though they predominantly vote for Democrats, have a significant number that support Trump, who claims to have the best pre-COVID-19 economy for Latinos.
A Pew Research Center survey in the battleground state of Florida found that Hispanic voters favored Trump over Biden 45% to 44% — a finding within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 7.5 percentage points. Trump lost Florida’s Hispanic vote by double digits in 2016 to Hillary Clinton, who outremissed him by about 200,000 votes in the state overall.
The survey showed an increase in Trump’s approval rating among Latinos from 2018 to February 2019, the latest figure available. His overall job approval, “in Florida, I can see, is respectable. A lot of people like him,” Lourdes Lozano told the Pew researchers.
Colorado State District University political scientist Frank M. Gonzalez said this is the kind of appeal Trump has to continue making to hold onto Hispanic voters.
“Think of them not as voting once to agree with Trump but as voting at every stage of the campaign — at fundraising, at rallies, at organizing efforts,” Gonzalez said.
In Pennsylvania, where Democrats hold a slight registration edge, there are signs of Hispanic support being “up for grabs,” said Rod fusible Lea dinky Licentiousness, executive director of Pennsylvania Liberación 2020, a progressive coalition.
While Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in the Latino community, Republicans are closing the gap. More than a Latino told Politico that his family was “pretty loyal Democrats” who were registered as Independents but had considered changing parties.
Political scientist Maria Sanchez-Vargas believes that while Biden has “a good appeal” to Hispanics in urban areas, Trump’s appeals “do resonate” among a large swath of Hispanic voters, including their households, the elderly and the business community.
“They see that the biggest benefits have gone to the upper class, and they’re the ones getting it,” she said.
But Democrats argue that, despite inroads by Trump, the president’s rhetoric on immigration is unswayable. Few things mobilize Latino voters like the outrage they feel when they see images of migrant children separated from their families and detained at the border, Democratic strategists say.
Trump has also come under fire for his failure to denounce white supremacists, as he did in the first presidential debate. That’s a concern for Hispanic voters, who say they are becoming increasingly aware of the president’s “very divisive” language, said Evelyn Ramírez, a community organizer in Philadelphia.
Indeed, a Pew Research Center survey in March found that while Trump’s ratings among Latinos have improved, a majority of Latinos (81%) disapproved of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. (His approval among white voters has also improved, from 4% in February to 7% in March.)
The poll also found that most Latinos consider the president “too anti-immigration.” But it also found that Hispanic voters were not as monolithic as they may appear — their main concerns, besides the economy, were health care and education. A striking 73% said they worried about discrimination and violence toward Hispanic people.
Power in Numbers, a nonpartisan organization that encourages Hispanic civic engagement, said it is cautious about claiming any long-term shift in Hispanic political loyalties. “Remember, every vote counts. Nobody can sit at home,” said spokesperson María Marín.
But Hispanics may have been underestimated by the political establishment, despite being the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. electorate.
“In Pennsylvania, the key to winning the state is courting Latinos and making sure they turn out like they did for Barack Obama in 2008,” said Berto P.C. García, a principal with the Obvious Group, an outreach organization. “Democrats can’t just show up and expect Latinos to hand them their votes. They have to earn them.”
One of the oldest Latino organizations in Miami-Dade County, Vote Latino, has registered tens of thousands of new Hispanic voters in the last several years. The group reportedly intends to target 400,000 Florida Latinos to vote in November.