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CV NEWS FEED // Recent polls show that former President Donald Trump is poised to post the best performance among Hispanic- and Arab-American voters of any Republican presidential nominee in the past two decades.
Hispanic and Latino voters comprise over 20% of the electorate in two hotly-contested battleground states: Arizona and Nevada. Meanwhile, the crucial state of Michigan has a significant Arab-American community.
About half of Hispanic Americans and over a third of Arab Americans are estimated to be Catholic.
According to an NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC Latino poll of registered Latino voters conducted in mid-to-late September, 40% of respondents indicated that they support Trump compared to 55% who support Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
In particular, the poll found that Trump has a stunning nine-point lead over Harris among Latino men under the age of 50. Trump enjoys 51% support with this group of voters, compared to 42% for Harris, per the NBC survey.
Trump is also winning Latino voters without college degrees by an even greater 13-point margin, with 51% of the vote to Harris’ 38%.
However, Harris still maintains an advantage with older Latino men. As a result, the two candidates are tied with 47% of support among Latino men as a whole.
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NBC News noted that the new numbers mark “a shift from NBC’s merged polling from 2020, when Biden held a 20-point lead over Trump among Latino men” as a whole.
“Young Hispanic voters ages 18 to 34 have also moved, supporting Harris over Trump by 10 points (51%-41%), down from Biden’s 44-point lead in 2020 (66%-22%),” NBC News added.
Forty-nine percent of the Latino voters surveyed were Catholic.
Sixty-six percent of the poll’s respondents said that the country is “off on the wrong track” while only 27% said it was heading “in the right direction.”
Fifty-one percent disapproved of President Joe Biden’s performance compared to 46% who said they approved – a near mirror image of an NBC News poll from two years ago in which 51% of Latino voters said they approved and 45% said they disapproved.
If NBC’s polling numbers hold steady, Trump will win the largest share of the Hispanic vote of any Republican presidential nominee since George W. Bush, who won 44% of Hispanic voters in 2004.
The results also show that Trump has improved by six points among the Hispanic and Latino electorate since 2020.
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Four years ago, Trump lost the Hispanic vote to the Biden-Harris ticket by 21 percentage points, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
In 2016, failed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton bested Trump by an even greater 38-point margin among Hispanic voters, per the same Pew analysis.
Former President Barack Obama handily won the Hispanic vote over his Republican opponents in both 2008 and 2012, by 36 and 44 points respectively – again, according to Pew.
During a segment discussing the NBC poll, MSNBC interviewed Pastor Manuel Nieves, a Latino voter in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
A reporter asked Nieves, “What are the issues that move … you and your community towards Donald Trump?”
“Well mainly, it’s the transgender and also the abortion,” Nieves answered.
The reporter followed up: “So, your community is choosing Donald Trump because of that?”
“Yes. The majority, yes,” replied Nieves.
Nieves’ home city of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, is over 60% Hispanic. Hazelton has a population just shy of 30,000.
Like Hispanic voters, Arab Americans have also significantly been trending to the right since the last presidential election cycle – in large part due to conservative stances on social issues.
A Zogby poll conducted between September 9 and 20 showed that Trump is leading Harris by four points – 46% to 42% – among Arab-American likely voters, a group that has consistently voted Democratic for over 20 years.
Per the same poll, “Among the broader sample of Arab Americans, which includes individuals who aren’t likely to vote, Trump’s margin shrinks, but he still retains the advantage, 42% to 41%,” The New York Post reported. “Back in 2020, Biden is believed to have won roughly 60% of Arab American support.”
Therefore, the recent Zogby poll shows that Democratic support among Arab voters has fallen by nearly 20 points in just the past four years.
A strong majority – over 60% – of Arab Americans are Christian, including about 35% who are Catholic. Around a quarter of Arab Americans are Muslim.
>> MUSLIM MAYOR IN MICHIGAN ENDORSES TRUMP OVER HARRIS <<
On September 23, CatholicVote reported that Amer Ghalib, the “Democratic mayor of the country’s only majority-Muslim city – located in the battleground state of Michigan – endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump for president.”
“Last year, the Muslim mayor – who has been described as a social conservative – provoked the ire of leftist activists when he defended a successful local initiative to prevent the flying of pro-LGBTQ Pride flags on city property,” CatholicVote noted.
