Democrats have traditionally been able to bank on three major voting blocs backing them at the ballot box. However, President Joe Biden may not have that luxury this time around. Trump has made significant in-roads with the black and Latino communities, as well as young voters, all of whom are seeing significant shifts away from their traditional Democratic Party home. If Biden cannot turn the tide, his path to victory in 2024 becomes much more narrow and, in some crucial swing states, almost impossible. In this series, Base Jumpers, the Washington Examiner looks at each of those three bases in detail. Piece three is about how Trump could win just enough Latino voters to defeat Biden.
A key path to former President Donald Trump winning another four years in the White House relies on winning just enough Latino voters to deny President Joe Biden victory in the 2024 race.
Recent polling shows Trump is neck and neck with Biden among Hispanic voters in at least two swing states that will help decide an election expected to be close.
In Arizona, Trump and Biden poll at 46% in a hypothetical matchup, according to a poll from the American Principles Project. In Nevada, Biden is leading Trump by just 2 percentage points, 42% to 40%.
Reports that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the son of Cuban immigrants, could join Trump’s ticket as his running mate may not necessarily be enough of a factor to win over Latino support, experts told the Washington Examiner.
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“Hispanics primarily are going to vote based on the issues, not on if there’s a Hispanic on the ticket,” APP director of Hispanic engagement Alfonso Aguilar said. “That may be exciting for Cuban voters in southern Florida. But for the majority of Hispanics, because it’s not monolithic, it’s not really a huge factor.”
However, other experts said there were some benefits to a Trump-Rubio ticket.
“Rubio would be a substantial asset to President Trump on the campaign trail for several compelling reasons. Chief among them is that the GOP’s recent gains among Hispanic voters has been primarily among English-dominant Hispanics,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a media strategist who helmed Trump’s 2020 Hispanic advertising efforts. “Rubio’s fluency enables direct communication with Spanish-speaking voters, effectively circumventing the liberal Spanish-language media networks. Such a move could be pivotal in unlocking wider support among Hispanic communities and would give the Republican ticket a major advantage over the Biden-Harris campaign.”
Lorna Romero Ferguson, a Republican political strategist based in Arizona, said a Rubio announcement could benefit Trump, provided there is effective outreach to Latino voters.
“If it is Marco Rubio, what is their overall strategy to then reach out to Latino voters?” Ferguson said. “It’s one thing to name him as your VP, but if that’s all you do, that’s not going to cut it. So the campaign would really need to create a Latino outreach infrastructure and really have Marco Rubio on the trail, speaking to voters to earn their support.”
If Rubio were Trump’s running mate, either he or Trump would have to change state residency due to the Constitution barring electors from voting for a president and vice president from the same state.
Another chief concern for Hispanic and Latino voters was the economy, according to the APP poll. “From what we’ve seen in our polling and other polling, … certainly the economy, and they’re being hit by high prices like most working Americans.”
A November survey from BSP Research on behalf of UnidosUS and Mi Familia Vota showed inflation and the rising cost of living (54%), jobs and the economy (44%), healthcare (33%), crime and guns (29%), and housing costs (25%) were the top priorities for Latino voters.
Immigration and the border was still a top concern for Latino voters at 20%.
“The majority of the people that are voting, from what I’ve heard in the Latino community, they’re going towards Trump because of the border,” Joseph Vargas, a veteran Texas GOP consultant, told the Washington Examiner. “Because they’re seeing the response to the communities has been horrible because of the border. I don’t know how anybody could say that it’s been handled.”
Trump has long campaigned on stopping the flow of immigrants who enter the United States illegally, building a wall on the southern border, and attacking Biden for allowing an influx of alleged “criminals” and “terrorists” into the U.S.
In an email sent to reporters late last month, the Trump campaign slammed Biden again over immigration.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s Border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals — who would have never been in our country under President Donald J. Trump,” the email said. “Biden could end the carnage today, but he won’t.”
It appears his attacks are working. A March Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed 73% of Hispanic adults disapproved of how Biden was handling border security.
“We’ve been seeing, especially here in Arizona, a lot of recent reports about certain groups getting arrested in the state or seizures of fentanyl and whatnot. And so that ends up being tied into public safety, which people care about,” Ferguson said. “That presents a great opportunity for Trump and Republicans at large to really focus on the border security issue when it comes to keeping communities safe.”
But she cautioned that Trump needed to focus on the “right messaging. And not get lured into making comments that could be potentially derogatory towards immigrants.”
The Biden campaign isn’t simply ceding Latino voters over to Trump. It launched Latinos con Biden-Harris as Biden stumped through Arizona, Nevada, and Texas in mid-March in a bid to appeal to Latino voters.
“Latinos con Biden-Harris will be essential to activating and mobilizing Latinos across the country and, importantly, is another way we are making clear with action that we are investing aggressively into earning the Latino vote,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement at the time. “Our community has deep roots in organizing, and we are excited to harness that skillset to fight for our families, our communities, and against Donald Trump’s anti-Latino agenda. There’s too much at stake in this election.”
The battle for Latino voters has sprawled beyond those living in battleground states such as Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina. But even in states such as Florida, a former battleground state.
The Biden campaign announced its leadership team in the Sunshine State on Monday. Jasmine Burney-Clark will serve as the campaign’s state director, with Phillip Jerez and Jackie Lee as senior advisers to the campaign.
Just days before the announcement, the Trump war room account boosted a story about a Florida Democratic Hispanic media event that was lambasted by the Miami Herald.
During the 2016 election, Trump won 28% of the Latino vote, compared to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 66%. Four years later, he would improve his share by winning 32% of the Latino vote to Biden’s 65%.
But Aguilar, of the American Principles Project, said Trump could make significant gains in 2024.
“He could actually surpass nationally what George Bush got in the 2004 election. George W. Bush got to 44%,” Aguilar said. “Nationally, I think Trump will get to 45% or more and even higher in some states where it matters.”
Bush’s 44% of the Latino vote in 2004 was a 10-percentage-point increase from the Latino vote in 2000, according to the National Election Pool exit polls.
Sopo, the media strategist, claimed that “Republicans are poised to capitalize on President Biden’s historically low approval ratings among Hispanics.”
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Vargas, the Texas GOP strategist, offered a slightly different opinion and claimed Trump could defeat Biden without winning a majority of Latino voters in November.
“I don’t think Trump would get a majority overall because Democrats have done a great job at pretty much just making Trump look evil,” Vargas said. “But I think he will get enough that it will surprise the election.”