President Trump lobbies for Latino vote
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — President Donald Trump held a "Latinos for Trump" roundtable Sunday, a push that comes as the president hopes to win a bigger share of the Latino vote than he did four years ago.
Trump is walking a tightrope in his attempt to court Latino voters ahead of the November election while also courting his base supporters by underscoring his administration’s efforts to stem illegal immigration on the Mexican border.
But at the same time, White House officials and the campaign are making a pitch to Hispanic voters that Trump built a strong economy prior to the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic, one that saw the unemployment rate for Hispanics reach all-time lows.
In 2016, Trump won the votes of about 3 in 10 Latino voters
With the election less than two months away, former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris are lagging in polls of Latino voters in some battleground states.
Latino advocates say that's because the Democratic party isn’t doing enough to court this key demographic.
"In many ways this is a wakeup call for Democrats, there has been consistently under-outreach to Latino voters including in battleground states," said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, deputy vice president of policy and advocacy at UnidosUS, the country’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization. "I think many times not only are they taken for granted, but they’re expected to come out and support Democratic candidates even if there’s very little outreach. We keep saying that’s a failing strategy and I think we’re seeing some of that right now."
The Pew Research Center projects that Latinos will be the largest group of non-white eligible voters in 2020, but recent polling shows Biden losing ground with Latino communities - particularly in Florida.
"Trump may not need to win an overwhelming majority of Latino voters in Arizona or Florida, but he needs to be competitive and try to diminish the Biden lead in those two places. The flip side of that is that Biden needs to match or probably best the level of support that (Hillary) Clinton achieved," said Martinez de Castro.
