MIAMI – Less than two weeks before the presidential election, NBC News and MSNBC contacted a group of voters in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, where 69% of residents are Latino. The county was once considered a Democratic stronghold, but in the last midterm elections it voted for Republican candidates for governor and for the U.S. Congress.
The voters we spoke to include a Latina Trump supporter who used to be a Democrat, a Haitian American and lifelong Democrat who was unenthusiastic about President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, and a Latino Democrat who used to be a Republican.
MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart first spoke to these voters in April. In the six months that followed, the race changed dramatically, with Biden dropping out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
The conversation took place as Harris and Trump crisscrossed the country amid an evenly divided presidential race, with both candidates appealing to the growing Latino electorate in appearances at separate town halls.
We wanted to know what these voters think now about the race and the issues that matter to them. We had an in-depth conversation with them in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, where they shared their opinions and had a spirited discussion about several issues. This included Donald Trump’s baseless claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets, as well as the issue of abortion rights and the economy. They also discussed the urgent need to find common ground – and lower the temperature of political rhetoric.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
