The New Yorker:

On August 29th, Kamala Harris addressed the Latino community for the first time as Joe Biden’s running mate. The senator from California headlined the launch of Nuestros Negocios, Nuestro Futuro, a new campaign initiative designed for Latino business owners. Held via Zoom, the event centered on Florida, a crucial battleground state where Biden needs to reverse an ominous sign for Democrats. According to recent polls, Biden leads Donald Trump among Latinos by a smaller margin than that of Hillary Clinton, who won two-thirds of their votes in 2016 and still lost the state. Many audience members had tuned in to the event searching for answers, or, at the very least, a measure of comfort. When the coronavirus began spreading across the country, the unemployment rate among Latinos nearly quadrupled and their businesses shuttered. Harris listened to the woes of business owners intently, and described an economic plan meant to provide much-needed relief. She cast Biden’s Presidency as an imperative. Her message felt overly scripted at times, but convincing enough to end with an ask of her listeners. “Years from now, our children, our grandchildren, will look in our eyes and they’re going to ask us, ‘Where were you at that moment? And what did you do?’ ” Harris said, tilting slightly to the camera. “We will start by telling them, ‘I voted.’ ”

In this year’s general election, Latinos will make up the largest minority group in the electorate and play a decisive role in four states that could give Trump an Electoral College victory: Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. During the primaries, Bernie Sanders beat Biden by wide margins among Latino voters in key states with large Hispanic populations, including Nevada, Texas, and California. But, over the summer, the former Vice-President rolled out a more robust strategy to secure support from Latino voters, and Harris’s presence on the ticket has given him new momentum. Leaders in the community nevertheless warn that the Biden-Harris effort may be overdue. National polls show that Trump has the support of roughly a third of Latinos and is trailing behind Biden by about twenty points—a far narrower gap than the thirty-eight-point lead that Clinton had over him. One cohort of voters, in particular, could boost Biden’s candidacy: young Latinos. Approximately forty per cent of eligible Latino voters are between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five—nearly four million of them have become eligible to vote since 2016. Trump is highly unpopular with the group, yet polls also show that young Latinos, in particular men, are deeply cynical about politicians.

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