Trump and Biden eyeing the Latino vote · Global Voices

‘Hispanics are not necessarily loyal to a party’

Illustration of candidate Trump on the left with a tattoo of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and ‘I love Milei’, referring to the Argentine president, and candidate Biden on the right with a tattoo of his campaign logo ‘Latinos con Biden’. Image from CONNECTAS, used with permission.

Story written by Leonardo Oliva for CONNECTAS. Edited and republished on Global Voices under a media agreement.

“During Trump’s four-year term, we had great international politics, no wars, unemployment or inflation, and we were self-sufficient in oil,” said Argentine dentist Ecio Pozzi, 47, who emigrated to the United States in July 2001. resident of New Jersey and U.S. citizen, he says he will vote for Donald Trump in November. “Latinos like me, who came here legally and have never lived off the state, don’t want what’s happening in our countries to happen here. And that is what we see with Biden and the Democrats.”

Pozzi voted for Barack Obama twice and supported Trump in 2016. Like Trump’s most radical followers, he is convinced that Joe Biden fraudulently won the 2020 election — despite the fact that there is no evidence to support that claim. He also believes in one of Trumpism’s conspiracy theories: that the current administration is opening the doors for immigrants to get votes. “They pay for their stays in Manhattan hotels, and this month they started giving out prepaid credit cards with $1,000 for monthly expenses.”

Colombian Daniela Rey, 37, has lived in California for fifteen years. She works as an “herbalist and entrepreneur” and, unlike Pozzi, will vote for Biden in November: “Trump is crazy. His four-year term was a total joke. Biden is old and he is probably not the best choice, but he is a serious man who has tackled the financial crisis of recent years.”

For her, the economy has been the current president’s greatest achievement. “For three years we have not worried about what the government is doing, because we have a reliable and serious person in office. And then there’s the fact that Trump won’t shut up about Russia… so they’re clearly colluding,” Daniela adds. She is one of many voices condemning the alleged conspiracy between Trump and Putin, who is considered the great enemy of Biden and the United States.

Pozzi and Rey are part of the 36.2 million Latin Americans eligible to vote in the US presidential elections in November. According to data from Voto Latino, an organization dedicated to encouraging community participation in civic life in the United States, the number of Latino voters increased 6.5 percent in 2024 compared to 2020, and can now 20.5 percent more voters voted than in 2020. 2016, when Trump won the election. In the upcoming elections, which will take place on November 5, more than one in ten voters (14 percent) will be Latino.

In addition to the white majority, Americans of Latino descent form the second voting bloc, followed by African Americans. However, fewer Latinos voted in 2020: 51 percent of them cast ballots, while Black voters made up 63 percent of the vote and white voters made up 74 percent.

Dennis Gonzalez, vice president of strategic initiatives at Voto Latino, told CONNECTAS that 4.1 million new Latino voters will be eligible in this election. And he emphasized that “they are either very young, or seniors, and live in swing states” such as Florida and Arizona.

It’s the economy, stupid

For the first time in nearly 250 years of history, Latino immigrants could play a key role in electing the next president. And their traditional sympathy for Democratic candidates can no longer be taken for granted in 2024. According to the Annual Hispanic Public Opinion Survey, many have chosen to abstain from party affiliation, which could be detrimental to Democrats. Additionally, Biden’s support among Latinos went from 67 percent in 2020 to 53 percent today. Trump’s support in that segment has now grown from 29 percent to 33 percent.

That’s why the Republican campaign is trying to fish in foreign waters, among black and Latino voters. Steve Bannon, himself the guru of Trumpism, admitted this in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the far-right conference in Washington DC. There, Trump shared the spotlight with two Latin American ‘stars’: the presidents of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and Argentina, Javier Milei.

“Polls show that Latinos are not satisfied with Biden’s policies, and it is a huge opportunity to win their trust,” said CPAC organizer Mercedes Schlapp, justifying the invitation of the two Spanish heads of state to an election event in the United States. United States, an unprecedented situation.

A week later, Trump, who openly embraced the Argentine president at CPAC, publicly praised him again: “I love him because he loves Trump,” he said. And he added, echoing his slogan Make America Great Again: “This is the biggest movement in the history of our country, maybe in the history of any country, even in Argentina they went MAGA.”

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Donald Trump speaks an elogiar to Javier Milei: “Él me ama y yo lo amo”https://t.co/EJXEJBEm83

— elDiarioAR (@elDiarioAR) March 3, 2024

Donald Trump praised Javier Milei again. “He loves me and I love him.”

Michael Shifter, former chairman of the political forum Inter-American Dialogue, minimizes the influence Milei could have on the Republican campaign. “The US-based Argentine population has no electoral or political influence,” he told CONNECTAS. And regarding Bukele, his views were similar: “The Salvadoran population is significant, but concentrated in three places: Washington DC, Los Angeles and New York. And because those states are Democratic, Biden already has a strong lead there. It is almost impossible for Trump to win there.”

Today, U.S. residents are more concerned about illegal immigration than any other issue, as a recent Gallup poll shows. Still, Latinos are more concerned about the economy, another poll found. It is, paradoxically, one of the achievements of the Biden administration, but its benefits do not seem to have reached migrants at the lowest social levels, who are underpaid, lack access to housing and largely affected by rising prices.

“Even though inflation has fallen, prices in the consumer basket are still rising, and that is something that Americans have to deal with every day,” analyzed Robert Valencia, a journalist of the #CONNECTASHub of Colombian descent, specialized in international affairs and based in the United States. Explaining the change in trend of the Latino vote against Biden, he adds: “Although figures at the macroeconomic level show one thing, the general emotion of citizens differs as their basic products become more expensive. That’s probably what influenced Joe Biden and favored Donald Trump.”

Ultimately, as Valencia says, “the economy has always been the most important driver of presidential elections. That was exactly what happened to Trump in 2020, when the pandemic upended the economy and Biden won.”

On March 2, a new poll confirmed that Trump is the favored candidate to return to the White House. The Republican would receive 48 percent of the votes, compared to Biden with 43 percent (and 10 percent of undecided voters). A likely explanation for Biden’s poor re-election prospects: most respondents believe the economy is not doing well.

A heterogeneous mood

Both Shifter and Valencia recognize that the Latino vote (which includes immigrants and first- and second-generation children) is becoming increasingly relevant in the United States due to their growing demographic weight. According to a projection by the United States Census Bureau, one in four Americans will be of Latino descent by 2060.

Yet Latinos cannot be considered a monolithic cluster. As with any other population segment, noticeable ideological differences also exist among them. Pozzi and Rey are proof of it.

“While a Cuban, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan voter in South Florida can vote Republican, voters in other parts of the United States (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican in New York, in Illinois) can vote Democrat,” Valencia claims. And he concludes with a specific case: “In south Texas there is an area called the Rio Grande Valley, it has a large Mexican population that used to be completely Democratic and who chose to vote for Donald Trump in 2020. This shows that Hispanics are not necessarily loyal to one party.”