Former President Barack Obama’s suggestion that some Hispanic Evangelicals ignored President Donald Trump’s racist remarks because he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion isn’t backed by much data, according to The Washington Post.
Obama made the comments Wednesday during an appearance on “The Breakfast Club” radio show.
"People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump, but there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts undocumented workers in cages, they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion," he said.
But the Post said not much data exists to support his claim.
Less than half of Trump voters listed abortion as a “very important” issue in their 2020 vote, according to a Pew Research Center survey taken in August. In Florida, where Trump won 56% of the Hispanic vote, the president’s label of socialism on Democrats seemed to work.
Steve Cortes, a Trump campaign senior advisor for strategy, said Obama’s comments were insulting and that Hispanics are not “one-issue” voters.
“As important as life issues are, the economic factors drove most working-class voters to Trump, including Latinos,” he said in a tweet.
“The truth is that it’s still not clear how evangelical Hispanics went about choosing their candidate, because exit polls and data are still being analyzed,” the Post wrote.