Young Latinos May Hold Key to Trump and Biden in Pennsylvania and Florida

By Nicole Acevedo - NBC News

Maegan Llerena, 27, is very aware that in the 2016 election it was a minimal percentage difference with which Donald Trump won in his state, Pennsylvania: more than 6 million residents voted but 44,000 votes were enough to give victory to the now President.

Llerena is the Pennsylvania director of Make the Road Action, the nation's largest migrant-led organization, and tells NBC News that this time, she is doing her best to make sure young Latinos vote.

“We need to

because our families, our neighbors and our community are literally losing their lives.

People are not going to survive four more years of Trump, ”he said, referring to how the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Latinos in deaths, infections and the economy.

At the same time, there are other young Hispanics like Armando Ibarra, in Florida, who have focused their

People lined up for early voting in Philadelphia on October 7, 2020.AFP via Getty Images

Ibarra mentioned as reasons the actions of the president, such as his recognition of Juan Guaidó as president in charge of Venezuela;

his hard-line statements towards Cuba;

and characterize the former right-wing Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, a divisive politician in the South American country and under investigation for alleged corruption, as a hero.

"Miami is so tied to Latin American business and culture that foreign policy is almost local politics," said Ibarra, who chairs the Miami Young Republicans group.

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A possible victory for Trump or his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, could be defined by the vote of two key states, Florida and Pennsylvania.

And there,

Latinos are the largest sector of non-white voters in the country: currently a record 32 million people of Hispanic descent account for

.

And the youth of this demographic is especially notable, as about

, according to the Census.

In fact, Hispanic Americans are the youngest demographic, with an average age of 30, according to the Pew Research Center.

One million Latinos are expected to turn 18 each year in the next two decades, making it virtually impossible to activate Latino voters without also understanding the role young voters play.

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Llerena said Make the Road Action has made more than 1.25 million calls and sent more than one million text messages to Latino voters in Pennsylvania.

The Miami Young Republicans have registered many new voters, according to Ibarra;

between 300 and 400 people a day, plus hundreds of Latinos recruited to volunteer for the local campaign for Trump.

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More than 50 million Americans have already voted early, due to fear of being exposed to COVID-19 at the polls on November 3, and

, according to data from TargetSmart, a Democratic pollster.

More than two million of those voters have cast their vote in some of the 14 key states for the Electoral College, such as Pennsylvania or Florida, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE, for its acronym in English), which studies the political mobilization of young Americans.

In addition,

, a significant increase from the 650,000 who had

in the same period in 2016, according to TargetSmart data updated through Oct. 23.

The early voting line in Hialeah, Florida, on October 19, 2020.Reuters

Among Latinos, 3.6 million have cast early voting so far, compared to 1.5 million who did so in 2016 when Election Day was still a week away.

, under 30, and about 66% are voting for the first time in their lives, according to TargetSmart.

Racism and reproductive rights as motivation

Yumaira Saavedra, who lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is one of that group of hundreds of thousands of young Latinos who go to the polls for the first time and early.

He said he will vote for Biden even though he backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

"I decided to vote for Biden because I definitely want Trump out" of the White House, said Saavedra, 18.

Saavedra is of Mexican descent and from a family with mixed immigration status.

He indicated that since 2015 he has been bothered by Trump's comments that paint Mexican people as if they were "rapists" who "bring crime" to the United States.

[This is how Biden and Trump seek to win the vote of Puerto Ricans]

"Wow, that's what he thinks of us, that really shook me," he said.

A Joe Biden rally in Miramar, Florida on October 13, 2020.AP

Saavedra said he also decided to vote early and against Trump, as well as organize other young Latinos with the right to vote, due to the president's response to the protests by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and because of the attempts of the White House to prohibit trans people from serving in the Armed Forces.

"I think

" said the young woman.

Saavedra said that in his experience, questions regarding the racial situation in the country after George Floyd's death are one of the reasons that motivated many of his friends to go to the polls.

Young Latinos report that issues of racial and ethnic inequalities are among the issues that have mobilized them in this election.

Eighty-five percent of registered voters said they have more intention to vote if they can speak out about systemic barriers to inequities, according to a survey by BuzzFeed and Noticias Telemundo.

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"It is sad to think that the death of a man by police brutality had to happen to realize that we need a change," Saavedra said.

Supporters of President Donald Trump hold up signs following a speech by Vice President Mike Pence in Orlando, Florida on October 10, 2020.NurPhoto via Getty Images

Another issue that has

.

Many Puerto Ricans settled in Pennsylvania after that disaster, and Llerena said that it is a present issue because the relatives of these Puerto Ricans cannot vote on the island for the president who will be in charge of the reconstruction efforts.

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Three years after the hurricane, the Trump administration and local Puerto Rico officials still have not made tangible progress in improving power grid failures and rebuilding destroyed homes.

That slow response to the worst natural disaster on U.S. soil in a century has motivated many Puerto Ricans to vote for Biden, but voters like Marlon González remain loyal to Trump.

"He didn't handle it properly, but

said Gonzalez, 31, who also voted for Trump in 2016 and has been recruiting Republican voters in Orlando, Florida.

[Donald Trump proposed to sell to Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria]

For González, there have been achievements by Trump, such as being the first sitting US president to visit North Korea, to hold talks on nuclear development, currently stalled, and the president's attempts to “bring more jobs to the United States instead of outsource them to other countries;

that alone makes up for everything else, "said the Puerto Rican.

At least

, according to the BuzzFeed and Telemundo poll;

This is an important group for Republicans in swing states (whose preferences vary between parties by year) like Florida.

On the other hand, Estefany Londoño, a 23-year-old Colombian-American who is a Democrat, said that two of the issues that motivated her to vote early in Orlando are Trump's efforts to withdraw funds from clinics that offer reproductive health services (such as Pap test) if they also offer mechanisms to terminate a pregnancy, as does the insistence that Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed to the Supreme Court before the people voted.

[How Presidential Candidates Fight the Battle for Florida's Latino Voters]

Of 18-39 year old voters registered as Democrats or independents in 10 of the key Electoral College states, including Florida and Pennsylvania,

hurried in the days before the election, according to data compiled by Civiqs, a consultant and pollster.

Data from Civiqs, collected for the Alliance for Youth Action group, also shows that the coronavirus is one of the most important issues for young voters.

Londoño indicated that he wants a president who promotes "corporate responsibility" and protects workers.

"It is very worrying to see how these companies get bigger and more powerful, especially when their employees receive much lower salaries when the companies receive so much money every day," said the Colombian-American.

"We need to have better education and health systems, and all of this can exist if billionaires pay their taxes," he added.

Both Llerena and Ibarra pointed out that

to vote in the two states, which Trump won by tight margins in 2016.

[This is what Donald Trump and Joe Biden propose on migration to win the presidency]

For Ibarra, from Miami Young Republicans, a second term for Trump would be an opportunity to “promote freedom and democracy” in Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua so that “people do not feel that they have no option but to flee from those countries to live".

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But Llerena commented that in Pennsylvania what worries the migrant community “are the

in Philadelphia” carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service, which recently launched a campaign that shows the faces of six people on a fence advertising.

Five of those six migrants had been arrested on charges such as being intoxicated in public and disorderly conduct in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh;

They were released from pretrial detention without ICE being notified because of a 'sanctuary' city-type policy.

"The Trump Administration obviously does not care about migrants,"

said Llerena, adding that "having another four years of the horror that Trump has already given us in the previous four" is not an option.