A Mariachi band waits to perform before a campaign event with Joe Biden, Saturday, January 11, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Determining how Latinos approve or disapprove of President Biden’s performance is less science than art, given the lack of national polls that tend to focus solely on Latino voters, unlike what a recent poll of 1,248 Black voters accomplished.
Such is the case of last week’s national Quinnipiac poll, which covered many relevant topics but also asked 1,576 adults (1,413 were self-identified registered voters) how they felt about President Biden. According to the poll, 33% of all respondents approved of Biden’s performance with 55% disapproving and 12% saying they didn’t know or didn’t answer. Of course, 79% of Democrats approved of Biden with only 6% of Republicans feeling the same way.
However, as expected, the one result being quickly picked up by right-wing media is that just 24% of Latinos approve of Biden.
Via Quinnipiac
Granted, the Biden administration has indeed had its problems with Latino voters over the last two years, and Republican opponents are quick to take advantage of that, but for this specific poll, I asked Quinnipiac how many respondents were Latino.
“The recent national survey conducted from June 3-6, 2022 reported results for 110 self-identified Hispanic adults with a margin of sampling error of +/- 9.3 percentage points,” Quinnipiac’s polling team told me Monday in an email. That sampling error is close to four times as high as the poll’s overall sampling error.
Quinnipiac also shared the screened question used for respondents about whether they identify as Latino.
This is the question: “Are you of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?”
For this specific case, there is not much to conclude about a poll that asked only 110 self-identified Latinos, some of whom could have roots in Spain and not Latin America.
Once again, this is what happens when you have organizations that do not want to be more Latino-centric but claim they KNOW Latinos.
110 Latinos is my cousin's last birthday party.
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) June 13, 2022
As for the rest of the methodology, there is no indication if phone interviews were conducted either in English or Spanish.
For those interested in a recent Latino poll that sampled a much larger group of Latino respondents, a new Future Majority poll interviewed “1,800 interviews of Latino voters” across a few critical swing states, according to Newsweek’s Adrian Carrasquillo.
Those poll findings might have a better indication of where Latinos stand with Biden, although it is a few weeks older than the Quinnipiac poll and it is not a national poll.
“In Arizona, Biden’s approval stands at 50%, with 48% disapproving. In Nevada, the number is 53% approve, 45% disapprove, while in Pennsylvania, Biden is doing well with 62% approval and 34% disapproving,” Carrasquillo wrote. “However, those numbers stand in contrast to Biden’s standing in Florida, which many political observers believe is slipping away from Democrats. There, Biden’s approval stands at just 36%, with a grim 63% of Latinos polled disapproving of the job he is doing as president.”
***
Julio Ricardo Varela is the Editorial Director of Futuro Media and founder of Latino Rebels.
Good analysis! VMR