Polls: Biden Lags Behind Hillary’s 2016 Numbers With Florida’s Hispanic Voters

Polls: Biden Lags Behind Hillary’s 2016 Numbers With Florida’s Hispanic Voters

In the midst of the Democrat’s antifa/BLM Marxist “revolution,” Joe Biden is lagging behind Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers with Florida’s Hispanic voters.  Indeed, two recent polls show Trump gaining ground with Hispanic Floridians, particularly with those who fled similar revolutions in their country of origin.

Florida’s Hispanic voters confuse and confound Democrats because a good portion of that vote comes historically from Cuban-Americans and more recently from Venezuelan-Americans who are wary of the Democrats’ recent massive lunge toward socialism.

It’s not surprising then that both Quinnipiac and Equis Research found that in Florida Biden is lagging behind even Hillary’s 2016 numbers and Trump is trending up.

Politico reports:

Joe Biden is underperforming among Florida Hispanic voters while Donald Trump has marginally increased his numbers from 2016, according to a new poll in the must-win battleground state for the president.

Biden leads Trump among Hispanics by 53-37 percent in the poll conducted for Equis Research, a Democratic Latino research firm. While his advantage seems large, Biden’s 16-percentage point margin spells potential trouble for him because it’s 11 points lower than what Hillary Clinton received in 2016 exit polls, when she lost the state to Trump.

At the same time, Trump is running slightly ahead of his statewide Hispanic performance in 2016 by about 2 points thanks to increased backing from conservative Cuban-American voters and additional support from a broader coalition of Latino voters, specifically men, whom the president’s campaign has courted.

As an aside, I find the language telling.  Note that Trump is “courting” the Hispanic vote, but in most reports, Biden is “investing” in it.

Politico goes on to explain that this is a bad situation for Team Biden because Trump doesn’t need to win the Hispanic vote, he just needs to meet (or exceed) his 2016 numbers or those from the 2018 midterms for Republicans, and it seems that so far he is on track to do just that.

Trump neither needs nor expects to win Hispanic voters outright to capture the state in November. His campaign aims to keep the margins where they currently are and hopes that Latino turnout for this Democratic-leaning bloc remains as low or lower than it was in 2018, when Republicans won gubernatorial and Senate races by less than a half-point each.

Referring to Republicans rejecting the Democrats’ very real and increasingly open embrace of socialism as an “attack,” Politico notes that it’s effective messaging with some Floridian Hispanic voters.

Odio said Equis message-tested the effectiveness of one of the most potent weapons Republicans have used against Democrats, calling them “socialists,” and found that Trump is close to hitting a ceiling on its effectiveness as long as Democrats respond to the charge, instead of essentially ignoring it — a tactic which helped sink Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum in 2018.

The socialism attack is still a major part of GOP messaging to turn out Cuban-American voters as well as those with roots in Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

And, crucially, Trump is besting Biden on the economy, still the top issue among voters.

Politico continues:

But Trump marginally edges Biden by 48-45 percent on the issue of who would be better suited on the economy, which Odio chalks up to Trump’s well-cultivated TV image as a successful businessman. Still, he said, 14 percent of Hispanics who like Trump more than Biden on the economy still say they’ll vote for the Democrat.

Marc Caputo, who authored the Politico piece, tweeted some of its key points:

FL Hispanic voter/poll thread 1/10

Good news for Joe Biden: he leads Trump by 16 points with them in a new @EquisResearch poll

Bad news for him: that’s 11 points below what Clinton got when she narrowly lost the state

But the race is far from over…https://t.co/t8TQyXrs4o

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) September 4, 2020

3) Trump has also made Hispanic outreach a top FL priority. It’s a fight

“Both sides are locked in a death match, with crosswinds blowing in both directions that make the race end up the way most elections do in Florida: locked,” said Equis @carlosodio, https://t.co/t8TQyXrs4o

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) September 4, 2020

5) Equis’ poll is a high-quality survey with 1k respondents —a must in a dynamic state w/sizable populations of folks w/roots in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela & the greater Latin American world. Hispanics account for 17% of registered voters https://t.co/t8TQyXrs4o

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) September 4, 2020

7) Trump’s campaign does not expect to win Florida Hispanics. Yes. Cuban Republicans have come home & he’s getting more men than in 2016. His path to victory is to hold Hispanic margins & turnout to 2018 levels & claw back more whites from Biden https://t.co/t8TQyXrs4o

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) September 4, 2020

“Latino support for Trump is real,” and while we may (quite rightly) question the validity or usefulness of polls, particularly when leftist shutuppery has caused voters to keep their non-“woke” leanings to themselves, the Biden campaign is clearly worried.

“It’s telling that Joe Biden’s latest Spanish-language ads are break-up songs encouraging our supporters to abandon President Trump,” said Giancarlo Sopo, the Trump campaign’s director of rapid response for Spanish-language media. “Public polling is flawed, but this confirms our colleagues on the other side of the aisle see the same thing we do in the data: The President’s support among Hispanics is growing and he is on track to surpass his 2016 vote totals among our diverse communities.”

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