Shock waves ran through the White House this month when a Siena College/New York Times poll showed President Biden trailing former President Donald Trump among Hispanic voters.
Many analysts said Mr. Trump’s 6-percentage-point lead couldn’t be accurate, but few denied he had gained ground.
Battered by inflation and worried about crime and chaos at the border, Hispanic voters are turning away from Mr. Biden, particularly in states where they play an outsized role.
“Democrats have taken the Hispanic community for granted for far too long, and no amount of money the Biden campaign spends will change the fact that Biden and Harris have been a disaster for our community, from the failing economy to the border crisis and the uncontrollable rise of crime in our neighborhoods,” said Jaime Flores, director of Hispanic communications at the Republican National Committee.
The Biden campaign launched a $30 million “Latinos con Biden-Harris” advertising campaign. The first ad cast the election as a referendum on Mr. Biden’s support for lowering insulin costs and defending abortion rights.
Campaigning in Arizona this month, Mr. Biden said he deserves Hispanics’ support.
“Look, I want to remind folks, because we turned out in 2020, we achieved the lowest unemployment rate for Latinos in a long, long time,” Mr. Biden said in Phoenix. “We cut Hispanic child poverty to record lows. We lowered health care costs. We made historic investments in Latino small businesses. And we addressed gun violence in the communities.”
He said he followed through on his vow to fill Cabinet seats with Hispanic voices, including Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and highlighted his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a granddaughter of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez.
Mr. Biden has some work to do to persuade voters to give him another shot.
His approval rating among Hispanics nationwide dropped from 74% in 2021 to 32%, according to the Pew Research Center. It’s not that Hispanics are eager for Mr. Trump, whose favorability rating has ticked up slightly from 28% in 2022 to 34%. They simply don’t like the way Mr. Biden’s policies have affected their lives.
Mr. Biden has some work to do to persuade voters to give him another shot.
His approval rating among Hispanics nationwide dropped from 74% in 2021 to 32%, according to the Pew Research Center. It’s not that Hispanics are eager for Mr. Trump, whose favorability rating has ticked up slightly from 28% in 2022 to 34%. They simply don’t like the way Mr. Biden’s policies have affected their lives.
“For Latinos, it is the economy,” said Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center. “Things are not going as well for them as hoped, and maybe they are linking that to the president.”
Mr. Trump won 28% of the Hispanic vote in 2016 and 32% in 2020, defying many prognosticators who cited his tough immigration policies.
Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic Engagement at the American Principles Project, said Democrats have become too extreme for the community.
“Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise,” he said. “Hispanics, like most Americans, don’t agree with the radical idea that men can magically become women and vice versa. They want to protect their children from being indoctrinated into gender confusion in schools and being preyed upon by a transgender industry eager to turn them into lifelong medical patients.”
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