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The survey carried out by the QR company for the group Voto Latino – which promotes Biden’s re-election candidacy – confirms the decline in the support of the Hispanic community for the Democratic candidate, who, however, remains ahead in voting intention within that group over his rival, the Republican Donald Trump. Beyond the Latino vote, the former president leads Biden in the polls despite facing criminal charges, which he says are politically motivated.
According to the survey, reported by the newspaper El País, Biden would obtain 59% of the votes of Latinos in the states of Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Texas and Pennsylvania, while Trump would reach 39% of support.
However, support for the current president and Democratic candidate falls to 47% when respondents can choose among other presidential candidates beyond Trump, such as the so-called anti-establishment independent Robert F. Kennedy, who obtains 12% of the support. He is followed by African American activist Cornel West, with 3%; and Green Party standard-bearer Jill Stein, 2%, while 1% say they don’t know who they would vote for.
In this scenario, Trump is less affected than Biden, and his voting intention falls to only 34%.
“What we are seeing is not a significant shift to the right among Latino voters. Instead, there are many who are frustrated with a two-party system and are seriously considering voting for a third party,” said Voto Latino president María Teresa Kumar, according to El País.
According to the outlet, younger people and within the Latino electorate are the most inclined to turn their backs on Biden and consider other options, a radical change considering the overwhelming Democratic favouritism among Hispanics in recent decades.
The reason for this loss of support, Kumar explained to El País, is the advantage that Trump has over Biden in the perception of management of the economy, an issue that will be decisive in these elections, in a context of increasing cost of living and inflation. Voters say in the poll that the economy will be their main issue when choosing a candidate.
“’It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of inflation and the economy on the Hispanic electorate,’ says the survey. More than 35% of young Latinos claim to have applied for government aid in the last year and 52% admit to having had to postpone the purchase of a house or a car,” said the article.
The note also points out another problem for the Democratic campaign: the potential absenteeism of Latino voters, an electorate that is made up of millions of citizens and that is key for whoever seeks to prevail in the elections. According to the study, only 37% of Hispanics said they were enthusiastic about voting, a feeling that is greater among Republicans than Democrats, a party that has also recently registered a sharp drop-in support among other groups, such as young people, Arab-Americans and progressives due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza, according to several recent polls.
A CBS/YouGov poll found that 81% of respondents said the economy would be a major factor affecting their vote, making it the No. 1 issue, with inflation following with 75% and democracy with 74%. The same poll also found that the majority of potential voters in the US said that Trump’s criminal conviction was not a factor in how they would vote in November’s election.
Trump became the first current or former US president in history to be convicted of a crime after a jury on May 30 found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, with the billionaire accusing the charges of being a politically motivated “witch hunt” that sought to hinder his chances of winning November’s race.
It is unsurprising that the majority of Americans place such little importance on the criminal charges when Biden’s economic policies, including the wasted tens of billions sent to Ukraine, has led to a once in a lifetime cost-of-living crisis. Under Biden’s watch, credit card debt has reached a record $1.1 trillion, with 60% of Americans now living paycheck to paycheck.
With such a decline in the quality of life that Americans have experienced, it is little wonder that there is a great longing for the return of Trump and why more are turning their back on Biden. This is epitimosed in the very fact that not even criminal charges can weaken Trump in the polls in the context of the great inability to afford necessities like food and housing.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from InfoBrics
