In Tuesday night’s feisty first presidential debate, it could be hard to make out anything, let alone decide who was more persuasive, but two thirds of followers of the Spanish language TV network Telemundo said Trump came out on top, according to a Twitter poll.
Sixty-six percent of respondents said Trump won the debate, though, as anchor Felicidad Aveleyra warns in Spanish, “This isn’t a scientific poll.”
Other polls of the general population showed nearly the exact opposite trend, with six in ten saying Biden did the best job, according to a CNN poll.
In general, Biden retains a decisive lead among Latinos, with 62 percent supporting him over Trump, according to a mid-September the Wall Street Journal/NBC/Telemundo poll. This result is basically in line with 2016 election results, where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, wont 66 percent of the Latino vote.
Thirty-two million Latinos are registered to vote this November, the largest non-white voting bloc in the country, and they’re expected to play a key part in deciding who wins battleground states with large Latino populations like Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas.
The election comes at a time when COVID and its attendant economic damage are disproportionately impacting Latinos.
Compared to the general population, Latinos are under-insured, over-represented among essential workers, and make up a disproportionate number of COVID cases and deaths.
According to August data from the CDC, Hispanics and Latinos are nearly three times more likely to catch the virus than white people.
The Pew Research Center also found in June that Hispanic women in particular, as well as all Hispanic people and people of color more broadly, have experienced a steeper decline in employment during the COVID crisis.
