Biden’s campaign is ramping up efforts to reach Latino voters

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Joe Biden has largely shied away from lengthy sit downs with national news outlets — but he made an exception for Univision last week.

The interview with the Hispanic media giant wasn’t just a tit-for-tat with Donald Trump, who had appeared on the network months prior. It was an implicit admission from Biden that he has to do more to reach Hispanic voters who have relied on him.

Biden’s campaign is ramping up efforts to reach this highly important group of voters. The campaign has placed ads on ESPN Deportes and LaLiga, to reach Latino voters tuning in to catch soccer games. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris conducted a slew of Hispanic media interviews during respective swings out West last month. And the campaign has begun using a new app called Reach to connect with Latino voters.

“I think that Latino voters know how much is at stake,” said Michelle Villegas, the Biden campaign’s Latino engagement director. “But there is an information gap. Our job on this campaign is to reach folks and connect the dots.”

Aides note that they launched their Hispanic outreach operation, Latinos Con Biden-Harris, much earlier than past Democratic presidential campaigns — including Biden’s 2020 run. But fellow Democrats also see the early spending and intensifying outreach as the reelection team getting serious about a potentially fatal political problem.

“This to me seems like a campaign who’s saying, ‘Holy shit, we’ve got to get out, and early, and we have to be in front of people,’” said Lorella Praeli, the Latino vote director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “My hope is that they’re really using a surround sound strategy.”

Biden won 63 percent of Hispanic voters in 2020, and although there are few high-quality polls taken from Latino voters, some Democrats have warned that Hispanic voters are moving away from the party, including in key battleground states. The president himself laid out the stakes during a recent trip to Arizona: “I need you badly. I need the help,” Biden said. “You’re the reason why — in large part — I beat Donald Trump.”

There is also the risk that Biden could lose some Latino votes to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. One poll from Democratic group Equis Research showed Kennedy, who benefits from his name recognition, performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states. If Kennedy gets on the ballot in these states — particularly Arizona and Nevada — it poses another challenge to the Biden campaign’s Latino voter operation.

As part of a $30 million spring media purchase, the campaign has used a mix of Spanish-language accents as well as Spanglish, which is more resonant with young Latino voters.

“The third party candidate factor plays a really important role here. It’s not just Biden v. Trump for Latino voters,” Praeli said. “And there’s also a very real appeal to Latino voters to stay home. There are very active interests at play in trying to demobilize this space.”

Aides insist that they are on top of the matter. One of the ways they’re doing so is by micro-targeting their approach.

As part of a $30 million spring media purchase, the campaign has used a mix of Spanish-language accents as well as Spanglish, which is more resonant with young Latino voters. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is home to a sizable Puerto Rican community, they’ve run ads delivered in a Puerto Rican accent. They’ve released ads targeted to Cuban and Venezuelan populations in Florida, and Mexican voters in Nevada and Arizona.

The campaign also has a mix of Spanish and English-speaking organizers on the ground, and plans to maintain a bilingual presence in battleground states over the next seven months. The Reach app feeds voters a regular stream of pro-Biden content and messages that volunteers can personalize and text directly to their friends.

The Latino population has grown at the second-fastest rate of any major racial and ethnic group since the last election, and an estimated 36.2 million Latino voters are eligible this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020, according to data from Pew Research Center. They’re projected to make up 14.7 percent of all eligible voters in November, which marks a new high.

Polls show that Latino voters still read Democratic. But the party’s longtime advantage with Latino voters has shrunk to its lowest point in decades.

“There’s not a doubt in the world that the Latino vote is now a truly persuadable audience. It’s still majority Democrats. But as the vote matures, it’s become more of a vote that you have to spend more time persuading than just turning out,” said Chuck Rocha, a former Bernie Sanders senior adviser and a Democratic strategist who focuses on Latino voters. “And I think that that’s why the Biden campaign is prioritizing, and starting earlier than they have, because they’ve realized that.”