The Biden campaign is leaning into abortion as an issue that can cut against Donald Trump with a critical constituency: Latino voters.
On Friday, the campaign announced a new battleground state ad blitz targeting Latino men that will pour $1 million into Latino media in May alone, according to Reuters. The 30-second spot, which will air in English and Spanish, features Marine Corps vet and Nevada carpenter Cesar Carreon, talking about abortion as an attack on freedom.
“I know what tough is,” Carreon says. “And a guy like Donald Trump that attacks women, takes away their freedom, and brags about it? That’s not tough.”
“If he wants to take any more freedoms away from my three daughters, he’ll have to come through me first,” Carreon says.
Carreon closes by saying that he’s with President Joe Biden, “ ‘cause he’ll give my daughters their freedom back.”
For decades, conventional wisdom on abortion has typically been that predominantly Catholic Latino voters would be more aligned with socially conservative Republicans on the issue. But new polling released in April by Axios/Ipsos and conducted in partnership with Telemundo suggests otherwise. It found Latinos preferred Biden over Trump on abortion, 30% to 21%. The Democratic advantage on abortion was even more pronounced when comparing parties, with Latinos who favored the Democratic Party more than doubling those who preferred the Republican Party, 33% to 14%.
The Biden campaign also appears to be using abortion to talk more broadly about the issue of freedom, a word Carreon used three times in the ad.
In its email to reporters, the Biden campaign framed the ad as targeting “Trump’s attacks on reproductive freedom.”
In the Axios/Ipsos survey, Biden also tested better than Trump on being good for the health of American democracy, 28% to 23%. But he lagged Trump on immigration (22% to 29%), crime and public safety (20% to 31%) and especially the economy (20% to 42%).
Arizona and Nevada are home to the largest population of Latino residents of the five most hotly contested swing states, at 31% and 29%, respectively. The Biden campaign has made an early push for Latinos in both states, launching its “Latinos con Biden-Harris” outreach program in mid-March. The campaign also released ads touting Biden’s signature achievement of capping insulin at $35 dollars for seniors along with his support for a woman’s right to choose.
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