Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) seems to have finally started to see the shift taking place throughout Latino voters to lean more toward the Republican Party, and is now speaking out about what Democrats could have probably done to cause that shift.
Early Tuesday on the “Pod Save America” podcast, Ocasio-Cortez joined the hosts to speak out about the new issue.
“I can at least say with Latino voters, we’ve never tried as a party. The Democratic Party has not tried in terms of Latino electorates,” she exclaimed.
“We really need to step up both in our efforts on campaign, but also in our efforts in governance,” she stated.
She went on to point out that legislation on immigration could not have resulted in any serious change, even though, as highlighted by The Hill, immigration is not normally a topic that is very important to the Hispanic voter base as many other issues.
“And I mean, where’s our DREAM Act? Where is our immigration reform?” questioned Ocasio-Cortez. “And even recently with President Biden’s marijuana executive order, I very much applaud that he went there, but he exempted people who were convicted if they were convicted while they were undocumented.”
“We’re looking at the overwhelming majority of people who have been convicted that would have benefitted from that pardon have status, they have status complications,” stated the politician.
“It’s tough because on the other side they have no qualms. They have no qualms about having an anti-immigrant message,” pointed out Ocasio-Cortez, going on to say, “But I think we get scared of that and that segmentation prevents a clear message and that lack of clarity makes it hard to win people over.”
The draw of Democrats for Latino voters has dropped by almost half over the past decade, as reported by a poll carried out by NBC News/Telemundo published earlier this month.
While almost 54% of Latino voters polled expressed that they would rather see Democrats leading Congress, and 33% chose Republicans, the difference has dramatically diminished since 2012. As of this year, the separation seen between the two is just 21, but back in 2012, it was sitting at 42 points.
A recently published Axios-Ipsos Latino poll working with Noticias Telemundo highlighted that 33% of Hispanic Americans said they will vote for a Democrat for the upcoming midterms, while 18% expressed that they would be voting Republican. Despite this, 23% have stated they currently do not know just how they will end up voting, which most likely will end up being shocking for Democrats as of Election day.
