On the Democratic side, we found that (34%) don’t believe that the Democratic Party does enough. The main difference is that around 13% believe that Republicans are hostile towards our community. When you look at those numbers, Latinos, not by very different margins, believe that those Democrats and Republicans ignore (them). But we are also concerned about being represented, which leads to our evaluation of the parties, the Republicans and Democrats. The other thing that jumped out at us was that Latinos think similarly to the general population, in terms of what we believe are the main problems that we face as a community. So very little has changed in several decades. Quite frankly, I used to do polls like this when I was head of the Hispanic Federation in the ’90s, and we always found out that Latinos didn’t know their leaders. So there is an overall lack of knowledge of who our elected officials are. But if we also look overall, a third of Latinos knew who Chuck Schumer was, who Kirsten Gillibrand was. Other than AOC, Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez, almost all the other Latino elected officials were unknown. Because when you don’t know you’re represented, you feel you’re not represented. If, overwhelmingly, we don’t know who our Latino leaders are, that’s a bit problematic. There were several takeaways, but one thing that jumped out at us was that Latinos don’t know their leaders. So what jumped out for you from the poll results?

So, we figured, do a poll that only speaks to Latinos, that talks about the issues that we want to know more about and let’s do it throughout the state and end up with a margin of error that is 4%. So the margin of error is usually very large. We have heard so much over the last year that Latinos “think this, that or the other.” We have heard so much that somebody believes that “we are supporting ‘X’ candidate versus the other candidate.” And we know in the usual polls that are done that we are a small percentage of the overall poll, given the percentage of the state’s population. Before diving into some of the conclusions, why do such a survey at this time? You just conducted a poll of Latino voters in New York to learn what their attitudes were toward political representation and policy issues. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Miranda discussed the results of the poll with City & State, which he said were not scientific but confirmed a problem with reaching the Latino electorate that he has watched for years. That was especially the case, he said, in the failed judicial nomination of Hector LaSalle, whom he and Ramirez fiercely defended against critics who said the judge was too conservative and viewed him as anti-abortion. The results were not surprising for Miranda, who sees the dissemination of political and policy news across traditional and social media platforms as lacking when it comes to Latino New Yorkers. Another 13% said the GOP was “hostile” to Latinos. When asked how much Latino voters thought Democrats cared about them, 34% said: “Don’t care too much.” Republicans fared worse at 60%. The poll also asked some loaded questions about Democrats and Republicans. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while 6.7% said Rep. How bad is it today, according to the study shared with City & State? When asked, “Who do you consider to be an influential Latino leader in New York?” almost 27% responded: “Don’t know, unsure or not sure.” Nearly 15% answered Rep. Latinos, as was the case in the 1990s when the 69-year-old Puerto Rican native, founded the nonprofit Hispanic Federation, still struggle to identify the most influential Hispanic leaders in New York state. For Miranda, the report is a case of déjà vu. has been mulling the results of the latest poll of Latino voters in New York commissioned by the Hamilton Campaign Network, a national political firm he founded with his longtime business partner Roberto Ramirez and led by former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. Veteran political consultant Luis Miranda Jr.

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