President Joe Biden is facing a new challenge in his reelection campaign as he continues to lose support from Hispanic voters, who make up a significant voting bloc. Recent polls have indicated that a slight majority of Hispanic registered voters have a negative view of the president, even though his administration is less than a week into the campaign.
Biden’s problems with Latinos go beyond just polls, though. His campaign website launched last week, complete with Dark Brandon merch, a new campaign video, and a Spanish-language version of their launch page. So far, Biden is the only presidential candidate to have such a translation.
However, the Spanish-language version underwent several edits since Tuesday before settling on a final version two days later. The page itself had multiple mistakes, including word-for-word mistranslations, which put a spotlight on the difficulties that even seasoned campaigns have in connecting with a bilingual electorate.
The stakes for Biden are high, as he launches his reelection campaign amidst doubts about whether he’ll be able to replicate that multiracial excitement, even if he faces off against Trump again.
His favorability has dropped across the board since last year, falling nearly 30 points among Latinos in some polling.
Meanwhile, Republicans are actively seeking to expose any divisions between Biden and the Latino electorate. They are pursuing aggressive media tactics to connect with the voting bloc and have accused Democrats of not comprehending the crucial matters that motivate them.
“What it tells me is that after four years, his Hispanic operation is still a mess,” Giancarlo Sopo, a Republican communications strategist who worked on translations for former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, told POLITICO.
He pointed to the website snafu as an example that the Biden campaign is “not that serious about going after the Hispanic vote… or that they’re ill-suited for that task.”
Recent polls indicate that a growing number of black and Hispanic voters are moving to the Republican Party.
Ahead of the 2022 midterms, two pollsters who spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity said that they had never seen as many black and Hispanic voters moving to the Republican Party.
These are things that we’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen Republican candidates getting 20% of the African American vote this close to an election. I certainly have never seen Hispanic, Latinos, or other races trending Republican like I’m seeing in this particular year.
Source conservative brief