Latinos are flooding to the polls to vote against Donald Trump
It’s official: Donald Trump would be the greatest Latino voter turnout candidate ever.
That’s according to a new poll released by America’s Voice and Latino Decisions on Thursday. Nearly half of Latinos and Latinas polled, 48 percent, said that they were more enthusiastic about voting in 2016 than in 2012. Of those who said they were more enthusiastic, 41 percent said it was because of their opposition to Donald Trump. For comparison, only 3 percent said it was because of opposition to Ted Cruz.
Just 16 percent of respondents said they were more enthusiastic about voting because of their enthusiasm about Hillary Clinton, and only 13 percent said it was because of their enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders.
The poll’s results aren’t entirely surprising; Trump has antagonized Latino voters since very beginning of his campaign, when he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and promised that he would deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. Throughout his campaign, the billionaire has continued to use demagogic and offensive language about undocumented people, while refusing to take questions from prominent Latino reporters on his immigration policies. Among the most notable of these instances was Trump’s decision to remove Fusion’s own Jorge Ramos from a press conference after Ramos questioned the candidate about his “border wall” proposal.
Just recently, Trump released a plan to prevent Mexican immigrants in the United States from sending money home to their families until the Mexican government agreed to pay for his draconian border wall proposal.
Ten percent of Latinos/Latinas polled said they were motivated by the chance to elect the first woman president, compared to just 4 percent who said they were motivated by the chance to elect the first Latino president, underscoring the Republican’s Party’s challenges in attracting Latino voters.
When informed of Ted Cruz’s plan to make undocumented immigrants “self-deport,” 74 percent of Latino/Latina respondents said that made them less likely to vote for Cruz.