A new Florida poll shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden trailing the 2016 performance of Hillary Clinton with Hispanic voters in the critical swing state.
Trump lags both totals but has improved his numbers since 2016, when he won the state with 49% of the vote and a 1.2 percentage point margin over Clinton.
In 2016, exit polls showed Trump clinching an estimated 28% of the Hispanic vote, while Clinton secured 66%, according to the Pew Research Center.
In the poll published on Friday by Equis Research, a Democratic firm focused on Latino voters, Biden leads Trump by 16 percentage points among Hispanic voters in Florida, at 53% support to Trump’s 37%.
Equis hired EMC Research to survey 1,082 registered Latino voters between Aug. 20–25. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The firm tested Republicans’ messaging that targets Democrats as “socialists,” telling Politico that Trump was close to maximizing his reach with the attack, so long as Democrats responded to the charge instead of hiding from it.
Florida is a must-win for the president, who has visited the state for campaign events and official purposes numerous times this year. The campaign is airing Spanish-language television advertisements in the state.
A top adviser to Trump’s campaign predicted this week that the president would secure “north of 40%” of Hispanic voters nationally on Election Day.
The Biden campaign has also stepped up its outreach to Florida and Hispanic voters with new hires, media interviews, and ad campaigns.
A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls showed Biden leading Trump in Florida by 1.8 percentage points.
