Actor John Leguizamo obliterated a small horse piñata while reciting a thorough catalogue of Spanish-language profanities on “The Daily Show” Tuesday in response to a New York Times/Siena poll that reported former President Trump leads President Biden among Latino voters.
Of the poll’s Hispanic respondents, 46 percent they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, and 40 percent said they would vote for Biden.
“You may be thinking, how is this possible? ‘Build the wall’ Donald Trump? ‘Mass deportations’ Donald Trump? ‘Guy who thinks Daddy Yankee is a baseball player’ Donald Trump?” asked Leguizamo, after pummeling the piñata.
“But the truth is, in 2024, Latino voters have something else on their minds,” he added, cutting to a news report about Latino voters prioritizing inflation.
That priority was reflected in the Times/Siena poll: 93 percent of Hispanic respondents rated current food and consumer goods prices negatively.
And polling both historically and in the current election cycle has consistently shown that Latino voters prioritize the economy over other issues and that many are inching right on specific issues that favor Trump, such as border management.
For Leguizamo, any newfound Latino support for Trump is unacceptable, inflation or not.
“Well, here’s what you can count on, though. No matter what Trump says about inflation, he doesn’t like us and he doesn’t want us here,” he said.
Leguizamo then railed against Trump’s comments at a fundraiser earlier this month that he wanted to allow people to emigrate from “nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland?”
“Donald, stop beating around the bush. We want nice people, Swiss people, ski instructors, Wes Anderson fans. Just say ‘white people,’” Leguizamo said.
Though the Times/Siena poll anchors Leguizamo’s riff on Trump-supporting Latinos, its numbers are an outlier compared to in-depth surveys of Hispanic voters.
Accurate polling of Hispanic communities has historically been a headache for pollsters, since reaching some of the more disconnected voters in rural areas, conducting bilingual polling and keeping up with how Latinos communicate can be expensive.
The Times/Siena poll was conducted in English and Spanish, but only 3 percent of interviews with Hispanics were conducted in Spanish.
Nationally, about 24 percent of Latinos prefer to get their news in Spanish, and 21 percent actually do get their news in Spanish, according to the Pew Research Center.
And the February poll’s sample of Hispanic voters was small: 154 Hispanics responded to the question of voting preference between Trump and Biden.
An UnidosUS survey of 3,037 Hispanic eligible voters nationwide — albeit one conducted in November — found Biden leading Trump 51 percent to 33 percent in a head-to-head match-up.
However, that poll did find some growing support for Trump: 54 percent of those same respondents said they had supported Biden in 2020, compared to 28 percent for Trump.