Trump campaign officials predicted the president would vastly increase his share of the Hispanic vote, which could help him ensure that he holds key states he won in 2016, such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump 2020 senior adviser Jason Miller predicted President Trump would secure “north of 40% with the Hispanic vote nationally.” Campaign manager Bill Stepien, who was also on the call, noted, “That’s a third higher than 2016,” when an estimated 28% of Hispanics voted for Trump, according to a Pew Research exit poll.
Stepien pointed to a Trump-Biden ballot test in an Emerson College poll published on Monday that showed Trump with 37% support among Hispanic voters versus Democratic nominee Joe Biden at 60%.
The poll surveyed 1,567 likely voters between Aug. 30-31, with the sample weighted by gender, age, education, party affiliation, race, and region in line with 2016 voter turnout modeling. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
In the Emerson ballot test, Trump also won 19% of the black vote, up from 8% in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
“To put that number in perspective, [George W.] Bush won 35% of the Hispanic vote in 2000,” Stepien said. “McCain won 31% in ’08, and Romney won 27% in 2012. So voters are noticing what we were highlighting at our convention last week, what we’ve been talking about for the last four years.”
The Republican convention featured a roster of minority speakers.
“Most polls right now show current support levels with the black community ranging between 9 and 20%,” said Miller.
In Florida, the Trump campaign is running Spanish television advertisements in Miami, Tampa, and Orlando, and “in Miami, we have a very aggressive ground game as well,” Miller said.
“Biden’s embrace of the Obama Cuba policy will be devastating for him,” he said, pointing to sizable numbers of Cuban Americans in South Florida and Tampa.
Stepien said that Democrats failed to talk up their agenda during the August Democratic party convention because their policies are unpopular with voters.
“It’s not that they don’t have policies, they just don’t want to talk about them,” he said, citing as examples the Green New Deal, trade policies “that ship American jobs overseas,” and tax increases. “The dirty secret is that these radical policies Democrats are hiding in their back pocket are super unpopular among the middle-class, blue-collar Americans, everyday Americans,” he said, pointing to polling the campaign has done.
Stepien said that the Republican convention, told through the voices of “everyday” Trump supporters, made people “feel good” about America, “highlighting” how Trump has grown his base while in office.
“You saw a black Democrat state senator from Georgia, a Cuban, statewide-elected lieutenant governor in Florida, a lobsterman from Maine, a Democrat Mayor from the Iron Range in Minnesota, a union president of the NYPD,” Stepien said. “These are the president’s supporters in 2020.”
“As someone who was around in 2016, the coalition looks very different these days because it is very different these days. It’s a coalition of support that has grown, that is growing, and puts us on offense.”
