Democrats Hemorrhaging Voters, Struggling With Immigration and Economy: Lara Trump

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, attends the Republican National Committee (RNC) Spring meeting in Houston, Texas, on March 8, 2024. Cécile Clocheret/AFP via Getty Images

Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump said the Democratic Party is losing supporters, especially among minorities

“They’re hemorrhaging voters on the Democrat side,” Ms. Trump said in a March 25 interview with Fox News. “It is a huge problem for the party. And the fact that you have the Biden campaign—when you currently have the Republican and Democrat nominees for president established—worried about a third-party candidate (like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), the alarm bells are certainly going off for them. And they’re hemorrhaging all these voters because we have a unique opportunity right now to compare two presidents.”

Ms. Trump said voters have seen four years of President Trump and they know what he will do if he wins a second term. “People remember how much better life was for them when Donald Trump was in office. You compare that to the last three years of Joe Biden as president,” Ms. Trump added.

“People say we don’t want this anymore. And it is showing. In 2020, Donald Trump got around 8 percent of the black vote. Right now, he’s pulling in 2024 at 23 percent with black voters. Some polling actually has him up six points with Hispanic voters over Joe Biden.”

Ms. Trump pointed out that the former president leads President Biden in swing states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida. The number one issue for Americans is illegal immigration, followed by the economy, which are two areas “where Joe Biden has consistently failed.”

“People want common sense. They want their life back. They want a better life and an easier life. And they know who delivered it for them. It was Donald Trump. And that is why at the RNC, we are very focused on this. We’re going after all of those voters. Donald Trump is picking them off one by one,” Ms. Trump said.

Illegal immigrants have been flocking into the United States in high numbers. The total number of border encounters in the first five months of fiscal 2024—from October 2023 to February 2024—was more than 1.15 million, up by almost 12 percent from the 1.03 million in the same period in fiscal 2023.

Meanwhile, inflation has rocketed under the Biden administration. In a March 13 news release, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointed out that “across the board, consumer prices are nearly 18 percent higher today than they were when President Biden took office.”

A poll by Gallup last month revealed that the Democrat advantage over Republicans among black and Hispanic voters was eroding.

“The Democratic Party’s wide lead over Republicans in Black Americans’ party preferences has shrunk by nearly 20 points over the past three years,” the poll found. “Democrats’ leads among Hispanic adults and adults aged 18 to 29 have slid nearly as much, resulting in Democrats’ holding only a modest edge among both groups.”

In a recent interview with Breitbart, President Trump said that Republicans were seeing poll numbers “we’ve never seen” before with women, Hispanic, and black voters. He explained that “safety and security, more than anything else” were driving this voter shift in favor of the GOP.

People switching from one party to another can have a major impact on the election outcome, especially in situations where the margin of victory is narrow.

In a March 26 opinion piece at The Hill, J. T. Young, a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, pointed out that “while in 2020’s overall popular vote, Biden beat Trump by 7,060,347 votes nationwide, after subtracting out his margin of victory in California and New York, Biden actually lost to Trump by 36,363.”

“The six states on which the electoral vote outcome depended were decided collectively by just a few tens of thousands of votes.”

As such, losing out a portion of the black and Hispanic voters could spell trouble for Democrats in the 2024 presidential race.

Ballot Harvesting Efforts

In her interview, Ms. Trump also talked about the RNC’s attempts to encourage ballot harvesting, early voting, and mail voting efforts among its supporters, pointing out that though the Republican party does not support such activities, “we got to play the hand that we’re dealt.”

Ballot harvesting refers to the practice of political agents collecting ballots from the homes of absentee voters and depositing them, mostly en masse, at a polling station or election office.

“We would love to have one day of voting. We'd love to have voter ID and paper ballots. We can get back to that place. But we have to do it by electing Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, expanding our lead in the House, and taking back the Senate. And then maybe we get back there one day,” she said.

“We are going to have a legal ballot harvesting operation at the RNC. It’s something that has never been done before. But yes, 224 days to victory. We are going to get it done because we have no other options.”

Ms. Trump encouraged supporters to vote for the GOP “as soon as you can go vote” and asked them to encourage other people to vote for the party.

“If Joe Biden is successful, if the Democrats are successful in November, it means they are able to employ communist tactics ... against their political opponents. It means that on the other side of this, we do not have the same country left. So, we’re focused. We’re working hard. And we’re going to make sure that on November 5th, there are no questions, Donald Trump will unanimously be the president of the United States.”

President Trump has also been supportive of such efforts. In fundraising emails sent out by the Trump campaign in February 2023, the former president made it clear that he was embracing ballot harvesting.

“The radical Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out YOUR vote and walk away with elections that they NEVER should have won. But I’m doing something HUGE to fight back,” the former president said in one of the emails.

The “path forward” will be to “MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.”