Trump and Harris campaigns focus on capturing the Latino vote

Washington and New York., The elite opinion makers in this country express a common feeling in this election, where few are enthusiastic about the options in the presidential race in a country apparently divided in half between a candidate qualified for lunatic by a conservative commentator, and a candidate who a liberal commentator says lacks much substance and is incapable of making a human connection with the electorate.

That influential commentators who support Republicans call that party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, lunatic and that liberal Democratic sympathizers criticize Kamala Harris, their party’s standard-bearer, as someone without great empathy, offers a good summary of the dynamics of this election. The contest provides, once again, a choice between the lesser evil and the worse. Polls have been consistent in recording that many voters do not trust and even deplore the political class in Washington, and the majority believe that politicians do not act in the interest of the people.

As a result, both candidates try to project themselves as external al establishment politician, despite the fact that one is a former president and the other is the current vice president of the United States. With the elections less than a month away, the two candidates remain focused on the five and seven states keys who will decide the final result, and about that small segment of voters who say they still don’t know who they will vote for.

Last week the focus for both campaigns was the Latino vote. Harris participated in a Latino voter town hall organized by Univision last Thursday in Nevada, one of the key states, while the Republican vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, appeared at a Latino voters forum in Arizona, another key state, Trump is scheduled to appear at a Latino assembly hosted by Univision in Florida this week.

For Harris, it is increasingly urgent to find a way to improve her support among Latinos. President Joe Biden won 59 percent of the Latino vote in 2020, but polls now show Harris trailing that. We believe that if the election were today, we would lose in Nevadacommented a spokesperson for the hotel industry workers union, a union with a huge Latino base and perhaps the most powerful pro-Democratic Party organization in the state, in an interview with Politico last week. That would be a huge defeat, since Democrats have always won the presidential vote in Nevada thanks in large part to the Las Vegas-based union, but if hotel workers start abandoning Harris, or simply don’t participate, she will lose the state.

Messages in Spanish

Democrats say they are confident that they will regain the majority support of Latinos and the Univision event is part of that strategy, along with the purchase of advertising in Spanish in that state in newspapers and billboards with messages of “Las Vegas is with the unions… Vote with the Democrats!”

But Republicans are also betting they can broaden their support among Latinos. Although no one expects him to win the majority of Latino support, Trump obtained 36 percent of the vote of this community (an increase of 28 percent in relation to what he obtained in 2016) and according to a new poll from the New York Timesis managing to maintain and even improve that support to 37 percent, while Harris is supported by 56 percent, below the 62 percent that Biden obtained.

In Arizona, Vance stated that “a lot of mothers, especially Latina women in places like Arizona… are saying we don’t want our kids playing in parks where a bag of candy actually contains fentanyl.” He also argued that inflation, energy prices and problems at the border are impacting this population sector the most.

But Latinos are not the only problematic indicator for Harris. In Detroit, Michigan, a city with a population that is 80 percent African-American, several organizers are warning the Harris campaign that enthusiasm for the Democrat is waning, especially among men, reported Politico. To seek to confront that, the campaign has deployed several famous African-American figures, from legendary basketball player Magic Johnson to several federal lawmakers and stars to boost turnout. No one doubts that the vast majority in Detroit will vote in favor of her, but it is worth remembering that it was the low participation rate in Detroit that contributed to Trump’s unexpected victory in Michigan against Hillary Clinton in 2016, by a margin of just about 20 thousand votes. .

The central message of the Democratic campaign in Michigan has focused on the threat that Trump represents to women’s rights, including abortion. But local politicians have repeated to national media that the economy is a more important issue for voters in that state, where Trump is better perceived than Harris in that area. At the same time, Michigan is the state with one of the largest Arab American communities in the country, and where anger over Washington and the Biden and Harris administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza is leading a significant number to decide that they will not participate in this election.

The technical tie remains

Every week, new polls show that the presidential race is in a technical tie, with Harris with a lead within the margin of error.

Given the tie, both campaigns try not to make any mistakes at this point in the game. Trump suddenly insisted, for example, that he is not opposed to abortion, and his wife Melania just published a book that includes a section proclaiming her support for abortion rights.

For her part, Harris, with her training as a lawyer, continues to avoid directly answering potentially controversial questions. For example, on Univision on Thursday, Ivette Castillo told Harris that her undocumented mother had just passed away, adding: My question for you is: what are your plans to support that subgroup of immigrants, who have been here all their lives, or most of them, but who have to live and die in the shadows? Harris, the daughter of immigrants, did not answer the question as she turned it around and attacked her opponent’s positions.

Political analysts say that as the number of voters who will decide this race shrinks, it is increasingly difficult to predict what will happen on November 5, election day. Only 13 percent of voters say they have not yet decided how to vote, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Worse yet, by some estimates, the election is likely to be determined by 6 percent of voters in six key states, Axios reports.