A Democratic congressman's surprise that the Latino vote failed to overwhelming support Vice President Kamala Harris and instead helped propel former President Donald Trump to a second term spurred a CNN host to question how he got it “so wrong.”
The moment came Thursday, two days after voters sent Trump back to the White House, when CNN’s Jake Tapper grilled Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) on his early predictions that Harris would win the critical voting bloc with large support.
“There's a lot of work to do in the Latino community,” Garcia said, acknowledging that Tuesday was a “rough night” for Democrats. “I think myself, a lot of other Latinos across the country, felt the vice president was going to win the Latino vote, I mean she obviously did win it, but the fact that we lost, particularly among Latino men, so much support, I think is, is a challenge, and I think it's one that we have to work on that Democrats have to engage in.”
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But Tapper was unsatisfied by the Harris ally’s response.
“I guess my question is how did you personally get it so wrong?” the host asked, adding that a Latina producer on his staff has been tracking the phenomenon of the Latino voting bloc shifting right for years.
“I don't think she was surprised – I know she wasn't surprised by what happened – you were. So, how did you get it so wrong?" Tapper asked.
“I was,” Garcia admitted. “I mean, look, we were looking at a lot of the same data, a lot of data across the country, data state by state. I personally talked to numerous community groups across the country Nevada, Arizona. Met with groups of Latino men of undecided voters," he said.
He added that the Harris campaign, many in Congress and himself “believed that Latino vote was beginning to consolidate around Vice President Harris, and that was just not the case.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.