Seventeen percent of Latinos gave President Donald Trump bad marks for his handling of the coronavirus, while 66 percent who registered to vote said they supported Joe Biden, according to a poll released Monday when Democrats their virtual national convention began.
Latino registered voter support for Biden, who will officially accept the party’s nomination this week, rose 5 percentage points in May, while Latinos’ rejection of Trump rose 14 percentage points in the same four months. from the interview.
“Response to COVID-19 is the gorilla at the table. It is a gigantic factor that Latinos consider to be the main problem they face. It obscures health care costs and unemployment, ”said Gary Segura, chief interviewer of Latino Decisions.
The survey found that 73 percent of respondents agreed that Trump ignored the virus’ early warning signs and downplayed his seriousness.
“Latinos consider Trump’s poor response to the pandemic to be the cause of the crisis,” Segura said.
The survey was conducted for UnidosUS, a national Latino advocacy group and SOMOS Community Care, a health care provider for Medicaid subscribers, the third in a series of interviews by the groups. Founder of the Latino decisions, Matt Barreto, works for the Biden campaign, but separates himself from the company’s interview and vice versa while he is with the campaign.
“This is an interview that suggests that we see, that the Latino community sees, that if we lead in the first of two conventions of our national parties, that we will look at those stages at which our backs are .. who will help us lead our community from crisis to recovery, “said Henry Muñoz, a former Democratic Party official who has funded major initiatives for Latino lawyers and is a co-founder of SOMOS. Muñoz is also a Biden supporter.
Biden has recorded playing of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in support of the Latino community, and although he leads Trump, exit polls in 2016 showed that Trump’s election victory included support from 28 percent of Latino voters. Some disagreed with the figures from the poll, including Latino decisions, saying his support was closer to 18 percent.
Twenty-four percent of Latinos support Trump. Segura said with 10 per cent of those surveyed, the results in this poll do not necessarily mean that the Latino vote is in the same place as in 2016.
In Florida, where larger shares of Latinos Republicans vote, Biden’s lead is smaller, 55 percent to 41 percent, compared to Arizona, where he leads 63 percent to Trump’s 29 percent.
Trump was hoping to see increased Latino backing due to a decadelong downslide in Latino unemployment, which hit 4.4 percent in February. But when the coronavirus forced the closure of businesses, Latino unemployment rose to 18.9 percent in April.
That number had dropped to 11.4 percent by July, while Latinos were experiencing transitions in infections and hospitalizations and an increase in deaths. Many Latinos work in what are considered “essential” industries.
While Democrats say high unemployment and disease would be less drastic if Trump managed the pandemic better, Republicans argue that low unemployment before the shutdowns shows he can return the pandemic-rocked economy to prosperity.
About three-quarters of Latinos think Trump is delaying warning signs and “because of his incomplete response thousands of Americans are dead,” up from 67 percent in May, pollsters said.
The pandemic and resulting national economic malaise will take center stage in the rewritten Democratic convention which will include a lineup of speakers, including some Latinos – though some argue not enough. It will end with the fact that Biden almost accepts the nomination from Delaware, his home state.
On Tuesday, Biden will speak with “Hamilton” composer Lin-Manuel Miranda at a virtual “community talk” called “The Future Is Now”, organized by the Latino Victory Project, which will include other high-profile Latino celebrities and activists as America Ferrera and Chef Jose Andrés.
Worries about jobs, coronavirus
Latinos make up the majority of the U.S. population that has no coverage for health care and has higher morbidity rates than the total population in some diseases that have made coronavirus more deadly to some people, such as diabetes.
According to the interview, half of Latinos said they had cut their salaries or lost a job, or closed a business they owned or had to close one.
Nearly half said they, someone in their home, a family member or someone they know, became ill from the coronavirus, up from 25 percent in May.
Nineteen percent in this month’s poll said the family member died as a person they knew, while 24 percent said the person was hospitalized.
“These gigantic increases are reflective of a community trapped in a double bond, exposed by the place of work, when unemployed because of their workplace is shut down,” Segura said. “It’s either risky work or no work at all.”
The poll found that 69 percent of Latinos are sure they will vote and 12 percent would probably vote, while another 18 percent said their chances of voting were 50-50, or that they would probably or absolutely not vote.
Problems regarding participation in Latino voters, ballot via mail
A little worrying for Democrats, however, is that in Pennsylvania, more than a quarter of registered Latino voters said their chances of voting or that they would probably not vote 50-50 or not.
Furthermore, showing the impact of the coronavirus on the community, nearly three-quarters expressed some measure of concern that they were exposed to the coronavirus when they voted in person in November. Among respondents from Texas Latinos, 47 percent said they were very concerned.
Forty percent of all eligible Latinos said they did not know what to do to apply for a post-vote in their state. The share that that process did not know was 73 percent in Arizona, a critical swing state where any voter can request a vote.
The process of getting a vote is becoming even more confusing in states as Trump seeks to block funding for the postal service and his appointment as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has made changes to postal facilities leading to possible delays in delivery of post-in ballots in various states and general chaos.
Advocates said those numbers show the need for greater urgency in reaching out to Latino voters and mobilizing the community.
“In the midst of this political climate, as the parties go to their respective conventions, 64 percent of Latino-registered voters said they did not get in touch,” said one party on voting, said Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS . “That must change immediately.”
The survey is based on interviews conducted August 7-15 with 1,842 randomly selected Latino adults in Spanish – 36 percent of the interviews – and English, via mobile, landline or online. Questions asked about the full sample have an error margin of plus or minus 2.3 percent and for registered voters, 1,488, plus or minus 2.5 percent. For state-specific results, the margin of error is plus or minus 6.3 percent.
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