Latinos, 'the new deciders,' are undecided — and that's a problem for Clinton

Spanish bickering and 1990s Latin pop filled the air on a recent Tuesday afternoon in the Hispanic enclave of Union City, N.J.

Four old friends from Ecuador gathered between parked cars along Bergenline Avenue — a strip that's lined with Hispanic-owned businesses — to quarrel, as usual, about politics.

The topic was next month's U.S. presidential election.

"No, no, no. No way. You can't believe in Donald Trump," 53-year-old Jose Elias said of the Republican presidential nominee.

His friend Mario Cadena, leaning against a parking meter, balked.

"I believe in Trump," said Cadena, a 52-year-old jeweller in this city of nearly 70,000, where an estimated 84.7 per cent of the population is Hispanic, according to 2010 census data.

"People support Trump because he's telling the truth about what happened with the country; about losing a lot of domestic jobs. He's telling people..."

"Telling you what you want to hear," Elias said.

Sitting in a camping chair, 70-year-old George Valverde did a quick tabulation of the foursome. The poll was three votes to one, in favour of the New York billionaire.

Elias was the outlier backing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But even he felt compelled to qualify his endorsement.

"I'm not crazy about her, either."

Latinos underwhelmed by Clinton

With that dispassioned response lies a potential concern for Clinton's campaign: Where's the enthusiasm?

Nationally, at least, things look historically solid. Latino Decisions poll numbers released last week show 82 per cent of Latino voters leaning towards Clinton and only 15 per cent projected to back Trump.

Drill down further, though, and the electoral map is where enthusiasm will count the most, says Latino Decisions chief statistician Justin Gross.

"What really matters is the electoral college, of course, and whether the numbers and turnout could swing things a certain way," he says.

As unpopular as Trump is with Latinos nationally, there could be a shortage of voter rapport for Clinton in crucial Hispanic-heavy swing states, particularly compared to where Obama was in 2012.

Clinton's favourability with the key group in the swing states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada trails Obama's Latino exit poll numbers by six to 13 points in the same battlegrounds four years ago. (Although, Latino Decisions argues that exit polling of Latinos has been problematic.)

That's worrisome for the Clinton camp in an election year that's this nail-bitingly close, says Anthony Williams, special projects director of Bendixen & Amandi, the public opinion firm that conducted the telephone poll last month.

​Given Trump's historically low polling numbers among Latinos, Williams says, it's surprising their support for Clinton isn't stronger.

Factor in good will among Hispanics towards Democratic President Barack Obama's legacy, buoyed by the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and it seems Clinton could reasonably have moved beyond Obama's 2012 exit poll results.

"But right now, she's not there," Williams said from his Miami office.

The danger is not that Hispanics are backing Trump. It's that "the new deciders" — as NPR's Latino USA radio program dubbed the voting bloc — might be too uninspired to cast ballots for either major-party candidate.

Turning favourability into votes

Obama won Florida in 2012 by a sliver (0.88 per cent), but he needed to command the Latino vote 60 per cent to 39 per cent to do so.

"If Clinton fails to meet that threshold, or meets it percentage-wise but turnout is down, the close states could easily flip the other way," Williams says.

His firm's managing partner, Fernand Amandi, helped lead Obama's Latino outreach in 2012. Amandi was critical of the Clinton strategy's rollout last month with Spanish-language TV ads in key markets, telling the Washington Post he questioned the wisdom of "waiting this late in the cycle" to engage Spanish-dominant households.

Clinton's challenge will be how to turn favourability into votes that help the Democrats carry key swing states.

New Jersey is not a battleground, tilting reliably blue in general elections. Union City, for example, voted with 82.1 per cent for Democrat Barack Obama in 2012. But given this Hudson County community's broad Latino diaspora — which includes transplants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and Nicaragua as well as from Cuba and the Dominican Republic — one might assume there would be loud support for Clinton around the Garden State's most Hispanic city.

Not necessarily so.

"It's a hard decision, who to choose?" said Adali Castelan, walking her daughter home from school past bakeries hawking pupusas.

"I know everything the Spanish people say about Trump. I don't think he's a leader for us. But I don't know much about Hillary. We just don't see that 'right' person."

Unmotivated voters

Of 20 eligible Hispanic voters that CBC News interviewed along Union City's Bergenline Avenue, most were undecided but acknowledged a slight preference for Clinton. Six people said they won't bother to cast ballots.

Gihanelly Rosas, 19, a Peruvian-American business administration student at New Jersey City University, will likely abstain from voting.

"I just don't like either of them," she said, adding that neither candidate has addressed her concerns about tuition or job creation.

Her friend Kevin Jimenez, 20, is also unmotivated, though the computer science student, who is of Colombian-Salvadoran descent, says classmates have been distributing get-out-the-vote literature.

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"I'm not too sure about either side," he said.

Laura Gomez, Latinos scholar and dean of social sciences at the University of California-Los Angeles, wonders to what extent that apathy might be attributable to a "Bernie Sanders effect."

"My son, who is 19, was very high on Bernie and not really high on Hillary," she said of Bernie Sanders, Clinton's rival during the Democratic primaries. "A lot of people are not quite there yet."

Latino vote is diverse

The Hispanic electorate should not be viewed as a monolithic voting bloc, either, Gomez said. Generational differences make a difference. Older Cuban-Americans in Florida, for example, tend to skew Republican, in part a remnant of anti-socialist sentiment under former Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro's rule.

This campaign has to be about not only hate and fear and anger. We can't just say, 'Vote against Donald Trump.' It has to be about hope and aspiration and enthusiasm.- Arturo Carmona, former Latino outreach co-ordinator for Bernie Sanders

A ballad dedicated to Clinton by Mexican-American crooner Vicente Fernandez has been shared widely online, "but it may not have the same cachet with Puerto Ricans or Cuban-Americans," or even a younger generation of Mexican-Americans, Gomez said.

Among some, the Obama legacy gets a mixed reception when it comes to immigration, he said. His administration has deported 2.5 million people — more than under any other U.S. president.

Arturo Carmona, who previously led Latino outreach for Sanders, believes "a vast majority" of the Vermont senator's supporters will "at least express willingness" to back Clinton. He said it's not too late to build enthusiasm.

"This campaign has to be about not only hate and fear and anger," Carmona said. "We can't just say, 'Vote against Donald Trump.' It has to be about hope and aspiration and enthusiasm. If we ignore that, people might stay on their couches [on vote day], and that could be a risky predicament."

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