How the Biden campaign is tackling its Black and Latino voter problem
The Trump campaign has been trying to exploit the drop in the polls for Biden among Black and Latino voters, but the president's team says it has a plan to hang on to them.
For months, polls have shown President Joe Biden losing support among Black and Latino voters, potentially handing former President Donald Trump a prime opening to steal longtime Democratic loyalists in November.
It’s meant chest-thumping by Trump and Republicans who boast that they’re forcing Biden to defend what should be reliably Democratic turf. Trump held a rally in the Bronx, New York, last week that his campaign framed as a way to reach out to minority voters.
But the Biden campaign is pushing back on a stubborn narrative that an exodus of Black and Latino voters is on the horizon. It says it has a game plan to keep these voters faithful to the president and give him the upper hand come November.
Interviews with more than half a dozen Biden campaign officials and allies, including in battleground states, reveal a long-term strategy, built on the premise that ensuring strong Black and Latino voter turnout in November would take more than a year of work and planning. That meant investing early on ground operations and through targeted ads — including in Spanish — attempting to reach voters of color that the campaign couldn’t in 2020; getting the president and vice president in front of local minority-owned news organizations; and fanning out in nontraditional ways, like at bingo halls, local food drives, barbecues and farmers markets.
They also contend that the narrative that Trump is attracting minority voters is over-torqued and, so far, more talk than actual investment on the ground or on the airwaves.
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