US President Joe Biden campaigned for the votes of the important Latino voter group during a trip to the states of Nevada and Arizona. He accused his likely new election rival Donald Trump of hostility towards the Hispanic minority in an interview broadcast on Tuesday. “This guy despises Latinos,” Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.
Biden referred to the right-wing populist's tirades against immigrants and in particular his statement that migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” Despite his verbal attacks on immigrants, whom he generally denigrates as rapists and drug dealers, the Republican former President Trump has, according to surveys, gained popularity among “Hispanics”.
This is a problem for the Democrat Biden – because the Hispanic voter group could be decisive in some of the states that play a key role in the presidential election in November. The Latino minority in the USA has grown significantly in recent decades and now makes up around 19 percent of the total population.
“Latinos were crucial to my victory in 2020, and they will be crucial again,” the president said in the Univision interview. “I'm working hard to win their vote.”
While traveling through the southwestern United States, Biden visited a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday. There he was greeted with the shout of “Viva Biden” (“Long live Biden!”). The president said to cheers, “You are a large part of the reason I beat Trump,” adding, “I depend heavily on you.”
Biden is campaigning for support from the “Hispanics” by presenting himself as an advocate for the common people. Trump, on the other hand, “only cares about the rich,” he said in Phoenix. Previously, during an appearance in Las Vegas, Nevada, the 81-year-old highlighted that many people had suffered economic decline under Trump: “They had lost their business and their faith in the system.”
But thanks to the laws passed under his administration, people “got back on their feet,” emphasized Biden. At the same time, he admitted that “there is still a lot more to do.”
Traditionally, US citizens of Latin American origin tend to vote for the Democratic candidate in presidential elections. However, Biden can no longer rely on that. The polls show that support for Biden among this group of voters has weakened, while Trump has gained.
However, wooing Latinos is a balancing act for Biden, as he himself has tightened his course on migration policy in view of many citizens' concerns about uncontrolled immigration. In addition, the Hispanic voter group is inherently complex and also contains conservative tendencies. For example, many “Hispanics” are against liberal abortion rights, as propagated by Biden and the Democrats.
In the 2020 election, Biden only won against Trump by very narrow margins in Nevada and Arizona. In Nevada he was ahead by around 33,500 votes, in Arizona he was only ahead by 10,457 votes. Both states belong to the group of “swing states” that Biden and Trump are also focusing on in the current election campaign.
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