The GOP under Trump mastered social media, especially Facebook use, in 2016 and even Democrats acknowledge that Republicans have made inroads in the aggressive use of WhatsApp encrypted messaging.Īt the same time, there has been a rise of Spanish-language conservative media, especially revolving around politics connected to Colombia and Venezuela, that are increasingly showing up in the social media feeds of South Florida’s Latin America diaspora communities. The net effect would be to depress turnout, possibly enabling Trump to carry a state that is essential to his reelection.īiden’s struggles can’t all be chalked up to election disinformation. political parties and are more likely than longtime voters to be influenced by mainstream news outlets and social media.ĭemocrats fear that’s where the role of disinformation and conspiracy theories might prove effective against Biden, because it plants seeds of doubt in an otherwise-Democratic bloc of the electorate that the former vice president needs to win.
Those independents - especially recently arrived Spanish-speakers - are seen as more up for grabs because they’re less tied to U.S. Many register as independents but typically vote Democratic. There’s a large population of Republican-leaning Cubans in Miami-Dade and a growing number of Democratic-leaning voters with Puerto Rican, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Dominican and Venezuelan heritage in Miami and elsewhere in the state. The race overall in the state is essentially tied.įlorida’s Latino community is a diverse mix of people with roots across Latin America. They showed Biden underperforming with this crucial Democratic leaning segment of the electorate, though he’s still running ahead of President Donald Trump by double digits. Gamarra, a political science and international relations professor with extensive experience polling in Latin America and Hispanic voters in Florida, pointed to recent large-sample surveys of Latinos in the state and in the Latino-heavy county of Miami-Dade. “There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d’etats.” “It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘deep state’ in particular - that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside,” he said. “The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.