Clinton’s New Strategy: The Latina Vote

Hillary Clinton’s defeat in New Hampshire included this surprise: most Democrats and independent women did not vote for her, but for Bernie Sanders.

But now that the race between the two pre candidates goes to states like Nevada (February 20) and Texas and Colorado (March 1), Clinton’s campaign thinks it has a secret weapon: Latinas.

In general, Clinton’s campaign seems confident of maintaining strong levels of support among the Latino community, where they believe there is still insufficient familiarity with the figure of Bernie Sanders. However, recent surveys have shown that this may not be as easy as they expected before.

An internal memo from Clinton’s campaign CEO Robby Mook, which came to light a few days ago, said clearly:

“The campaign is moving to states with more diverse constituencies and we expect there that the Hillary’s strength (among Latinos and African Americans) to become an electoral advantage,” says the memo.

However, this was the same logic that Clinton used during her 2008 campaign against Barack Obama. During the primaries, Obama did not virtually campaign in the Latino community and many of Hillary’s victories were supported in states with strong Latino vote (for example, she won the assemblies -caucuses- in Nevada).

But Obama could win the nomination with a more aggressive strategy of organization and delegates count, along with the strong support from the African American community.

Sanders has made himself public among Latinos

This time, Clinton began the campaign with a substantial margin of support among Latinos of all ages.

A poll by ImpreMedia and Latino Decisions, conducted last November, found more favorable figures of support for Clinton rather than for Sanders in the Latino community, mainly because Sanders was much less known than Clinton.

40% of Latinos did not know who Sanders was, or had no opinion of him while only 12% of Latinos had no opinion of Clinton and everyone knew who she was (the survey found 0% who said “do not know”).

But Sanders was showing more strength among Latino youth, said Sylvia Manzano, co director of Latino Decisions. (Manzano is not working with the Clinton campaign, although two of the co directors of the firm were hired by Clinton a few months ago).

“Unfortunately we do not have updated figures to see how the support has changed between age and gender,” Manzano said. “But what we do know is that Latina women go out to vote at higher rates than men.”

There are no more recent public surveys that indicate how Sanders has advanced among young Latinos- youth groups are one of his strengths.

But a survey released on February 4 by Public Policy Polling found that Sanders’s image among Latinos is now comparable to or greater than that of Hillary’s (77% positive vs. 66% for Hillary), and the advantage in Hispanic votes for Hillary to be slightly 12 percentage points (48% by Hillary, 36% by Bernie).

Waiting for Latinas to make a difference, Hillary Clinton has filled her campaign with Latinas in key positions: the political director is a Latina (Amanda Renteria), the director of community relations is a young 27 year-old “dreamer” (Lorella Praelli) is also a Latina. Her campaign manager in Nevada, is another Latina, Emmy Ruiz.

Last October, Hillary went to Texas, which votes on March and where 250 delegates (a significant thickness) are at stake, and held an event organized by Praelli, in which she appeared with the Castro brothers and her campaign circulated photos of the candidate with the nickname “the Hillary”.

But Sander’s strength in recent polls tosses the question out there: will Latinas be Hillary’s salvation or will Sanders be able to attract enough of that vote to be competitive?

Nevada will be the first test and then Colorado and Texas on March 1.