The co-chairman of President Biden’s re-election campaign admitted Sunday he is unsure why polls indicate the commander in chief is hemorrhaging support among Latino voters.
“Well, I don’t know. I think that you got to play this thing out and see actually how it works. Latino voters are like everybody else,” co-Chair Mitch Landrieu told NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about the latest polling.
“They move around from space to space. You see this with African American voters as well.”
A recent Equis poll that sampled 1,592 Latino voters in battleground states concluded that 41% trust former President Donald Trump, 78, over Biden, 81, on immigration — part of the upward trend for The Donald.
Democrats had once held an advantage with Latinos on the issue of immigration, but now the key voting bloc in swing states is becoming disillusioned with that they perceive as “broken promises” from Democrats on matters such as a pathway to citizenship, according to the poll.
Scores of other polls have also shown a dip in Biden’s support among Latinos.
During the 2020 presidential election, Biden notched 65% support from Hispanic voters compared to 32% for Trump, according to exit poll data.
Some strategists have fretted that independent hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken a considerable bite out of Biden’s standing with Latino and Hispanic voters.
Survey data from Voto Latino, a group that works to register Latinos to vote, found that Biden bested Trump 59% to 39% in swing states. But when third-party contenders were added to the fray such as Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein, Biden scored 47% to Trump’s 34%. That poll was released earlier this month and surveyed 2,000 registered Latinos.
Democrats have also faced similar warning signs about Biden’s performance with black and younger voters, though some allies such as Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) have downplayed those concerns.
Landrieu did acknowledge that “the border is in trouble, and it has been for the past 20 or 30 years.
“Joe Biden on Day One, on Day One, sent a comprehensive immigration reform proposal to Congress. They did nothing with it,” he claimed of the hot-button issue, inflamed by Biden’s disastrous open-border policies.
For months, Biden and Trump have been locked in a fairly static rematch, with very little significant swings in the polling. That could change this week as the pair go head-to-head in a televised national debate Thursday.
“Everything that we do is high-risk. I mean, every campaign that you have is going to be close, so everything that you do has to work,” Landrieu said.
“It really doesn’t matter how Donald Trump shows up. If he comes in unhinged like he is most of the time, or he sits there and is quiet, people are going to know that he’s a twice impeached felon.”
The verbal bout, which will be hosted by CNN in Atlanta, is much earlier in the campaign cycle than typical presidential debates. Biden’s and Trump’s teams bypassed the Commission on Presidential Debates to orchestrate the showdown.
Under the CNN rules, the microphone will cut off when it’s the opposing candidate’s turn to speak.
“Who knows what Donald Trump is going to do at any minute or any time? I bet that he’s going to talk over the microphone times like he does, but the best way to fight a bully is to stand up to him, Landrieu said. “And Joe Biden has done that before.
“Donald Trump’s presidency was awful.”
The debate is widely seen as a key test of concerns about Biden’s age. He is the oldest president in US history and would be 86 at the end of a hypothetical second term.
Trump, who just turned 78 earlier this month, would surpass Biden as the oldest president if he wins and serves out a full term.
“First of all, Joe Biden doesn’t have any concerns about his mental fitness, nor do I,” Landrieu said. “I spent an incredible amount of time with Joe Biden. That’s just a fade that the other side is pushing.”
