Every Saturday for several months, Abel Iraola has kept track of the boisterous crowd of Donald Trump supporters that gathers near an exit ramp of the Palmetto Expressway in Hialeah, the city with the highest concentration of Republican Cuban Americans in Florida.
A 28-year-old Democrat, Iraola lives two blocks away from the spot where the impromptu gathering gives him a sense of what his party’s presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is up against in the race to win Florida’s Latino vote.
“He and everyone in the Democratic party should be concerned about turning out more Hispanic voters than Trump until the final results come in,” Iraola said. “We shouldn’t have to be worrying about the Hispanic vote in Florida.”
Yet recent polls show Biden has lost ground among Florida’s Latino voters compared to his predecessors Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom outperformed their Republican rivals among this key voting bloc in the last three presidential elections.
Trump and Biden are virtually tied in Florida, prompting the former vice-president to make his first campaign trip as his party’s nominee to the Sunshine State earlier this week when he touched down in Kissimmee, a central Florida city with a huge population of Puerto Rican voters.
Around the same time, former New York City mayor, ex-presidential candidate and multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg announced he was committing $100m to turn this crucial swing state blue on 3 November. The “never-Trump” Republican outfit the Lincoln Project also announced it would produce ads targeting Florida’s Latino voters.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
