These four numbers show why Trump may regret picking a fight with Hispanic voters
Latest proposal to build border wall with money sent home to mom didn’t help
By Tim Townsend and Christopher Dang
If Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee, it may be Hispanic voters who block his path to the White House. Trump has alienated Hispanics throughout his campaign, but he went further on Tuesday by threatening to cut off the flow of money that Mexicans working in the US send to family back home. Here’s why his attacks may backfire.
The first thing to know is that the Hispanic electorate in the US has grown rapidly. There are now 4 million more eligible Hispanic voters than there were in the last presidential election.
The larger the Hispanic population becomes, the more voting power it wields. In recent decades, no candidate has won the presidency without taking at least a third of the Hispanic vote.
About a third of Hispanics are undecided, and in theory Trump could win those votes. But he’s so alienated Hispanics that they are applying for naturalization in record numbers in order to vote against him. Trump’s “unfavorables” among Hispanics are record-setting.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Trump had outlined the specifics of his plan to get Mexico to pay for a 1,000-mile wall bordering the US. The idea is a sort of ransom, in which the US government — using the Patriot Act — would cut off the $25 billion annual flow of money transfers Mexicans send home to family until Mexico made “a one-time payment of $5–10 billion.” That’s a particularly risky threat given that most of the Hispanic electorate is of Mexican origin.
