Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro is confident in the Democrats’ ability to attract Latino voters in Georgia’s special election on Tuesday. Democrats hope they can count on the electoral bloc to help them gain control of the Senate, just as they helped turn the state blue in November.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm and understanding about the importance of voting in these second rounds of the Senate,” said Castro, who ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, to CBSN Red & Blue anchor Elaine Quijano on Monday.
The two Senate seats in dispute will determine senate control, bringing extra attention to the races. Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are running against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. The Republican and Democratic parties have sent high-level representatives to the state, including the president Trump, President-elect Biden and former President Obama.
The Associated Press’s Votecast poll found that 3% of the 5 million voters in Georgia’s general election were Latino and 60% of them voted for Biden in November. The former vice president had a vote margin of more than 35,000 votes over Trump among Latinos in the state, according to the AP.
Early voting data shows that Latinos have the lowest turnout among any demographic group in the state, with 24.2% voting in advance. Even so, Castro said he had no doubts about attending.
“What I hope is that we will see good and healthy participation, not just in the Latin community, but in different communities for these Democratic candidates,” he said. “I am confident … the Latin community will perform well for these two Democratic candidates.”
“Both campaigns put a lot of effort and resources to remove voters and I am confident that we will see the results of that when all votes are counted after the polls close tomorrow,” added Castro. .