Washington, United States /
With spots in Spanish, English and spanglisha harsher tone towards the irregular migration and the support of Political Action GroupsKamala Harris’ campaign seeks to reduce a support deficit among voters latino votersmany of whom emigrated to Donald Trump’s camp convinced that his policies were more effective in containing inflation and controlling the border.
“Workers, including hard-working immigrants, are recovering the economy, but as Trump threatens to separate families and weaken our economy, Trump’s balanced approach Kamala Harris regarding immigration keeps families together by protecting our loved ones from deportation, providing a path to citizenship and work visas for dreamers,” he says in English and Spanish the most recent announcement in favor of Kamala.
Sponsored by Democratic groups —Priorities USA Action and We are PAC— as part of a $5 million round of political advertising, the spot addresses with emotional images the two weakest points of the harris campaign: the first economy and migration.
With 36.2 million voters eligible to vote this November 5, the latin community could be definitive in the outcome of the elections, especially in the key states of Arizona and Snowfallwhere they represent more than a quarter of the electorate and give victory to either of the two candidates in the Electoral college with just a few thousand votes difference.
But Kamala is the victim of a trend that has worsened since the presidency of Barack Obama: A hemorrhage of Latino voters is moving into the Republican corner and threatens to unravel Democratic dominance of an increasingly decisive segment of voters.
In 2012, Obama won 70 percent of the Latino vote. But the proportion fell to 66% under Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 61% under Joe Biden in 2020. For Harris, the figure is 59%one of the lowest percentages in recent history.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan coined a phrase that four decades later began to materialize: “Latinos are Republicans. But they still don’t know”. In 1984 he managed to capture 37% of the Hispanic votes. Under the same mantra, George W Bush He made a strong approach to the community, which he saw as the strongest pillar of the Republican Party in the long term. His courtship earned him support from 40 percent of Hispanics in 2004, the highest in recent history.
Yeah Kamala Harris fails to reverse, or at least stop, the bleeding of Latino votersTrump could reach or surpass the mark of the 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2020, in his fight against Biden, Trump obtained 32% of this group.
In this context, Trump launched his initiative in Las Vegas “Latin Americans for Trump”, to court the Latino vote with a message based on the mirage that during his government he was able to achieve the Latino unemployment at record levelsalthough actual statistics show that Biden has achieved slightly lower rates of Hispanic unemployment.
“Excluding the peak during the pandemic period from March 2020 to December 2021, Latino unemployment has averaged 4.51 percent under Biden, which is marginally lower than 4.69% under Trump“, according to the Poynter Institute
Led by Cuban-Americans Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Carlos Gimenezthe Latin Americans for Trump initiative, seeks to woo the Latino vote in states like Arizona and Nevada, and once and for all take away from Harris one of the Democrats’ historic columns of support.
But a new survey of UNIDOUSthe largest Latino advocacy organization in the United States found that 55 percent of Latino voters He had not been contacted by either Democrats or Republicans, despite the fact that in a tight race, like the current electoral cycle, they could be the balance on November 5.
“That is nothing new,” says the director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO)Arturo Vargas. “The parties historically They have ignored the Latino vote. And they have not invested because the majority live in states like California, Florida or New York, where it is estimated that they already know the results.”
The survey of UNUDOSUS showed that Harris leads Trump in the Latino vote in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvaniaas well as among the latin women and the young. But in some cases the margin is as small as 23 points, like in Nevada,
The question is whether those margins will be enough to take her to the White House, in what is emerging as one of the closest elections of American history.
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