Biden wants to strengthen Latino support during a visit to Nevada and Arizona

President Biden plans to visit Nevada and Arizona this week to defend his economic policies and attack Republicans on immigration and abortion, as he seeks to shore up a crucial but wavering Latino electorate in the two battleground states.

Mr. Biden will begin his trip on Tuesday in Reno, Nevada, where he plans to promote his economic agenda and denounce former President Donald J. Trump over abortion rights. He then plans to travel to Las Vegas to promote his efforts to lower housing costs before heading to Phoenix on Wednesday, where he will make a production announcement.

The trip will seek to turn three of Mr. Biden’s biggest weaknesses — the economy, immigration and declining support among Latinos — into strengths, and it comes as the president adopts an aggressive new tone adopted at the opening of the general meeting. election campaign against Mr Trump.

Mr. Biden will especially have his eye on Latino voters, who are increasingly turning to Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden’s campaign will air two interviews with the president on radio stations that appeal to Latino audiences, kicking off an organizing program to rally Latino voters and attack Republicans for restricting abortion rights and the scuttling of a bipartisan immigration package full of measures to tighten border security. .

“The Latino vote was crucial to the president’s victory in 2020, and 2024 will be no different,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said in a statement. “Our community has deep roots in organizing, and we are excited to leverage those skills to fight for our families, our communities and against Donald Trump’s anti-Latino agenda.”

Democrats have relied on Latino voters in recent years, especially in states like Nevada and Arizona, which could tilt the 2024 presidential election. Latinos make up roughly one in four eligible voters in Arizona and Nevada – says Biden won in 2020. But Trump has found support among many in the diverse Latino electorate, including evangelicals and those focused on border security. Trump has particularly appealed to Latinos without a college degree, an education gap that has caught the attention of the White House.

Polls show Trump winning more than 40 percent of Latino voters, a level not reached by a Republican in two decades. Some polls even show Mr. Trump ahead of Mr. Biden among Latino voters, after Mr. Biden won nearly 60 percent of their votes in 2020.

Biden campaign officials say they are prepared to go on the offensive on an issue that resonates in both states and was once seen as a political vulnerability in the White House: immigration and the border. A memo written by Ms. Chávez Rodríguez cites Biden’s approach to immigration as a primary way to “provide contrast on the issues that matter most to Western voters.”

“President Biden negotiated the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border in decades — only for Donald Trump to tell his MAGA Republican allies to block these efforts to help Trump politically,” Ms. Chávez Rodríguez said in the memo.

But in a sign of how complex immigration politics can be, Mr. Biden will also have to strike a balance between talking about border security measures and emphasizing his efforts to forge a path to citizenship, said John Tuman, a political science professor. at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which focuses on the Latino electorate.

While Mr. Biden has made the right moves on immigration lately, many Nevada voters are also interested in reforming the overall immigration system, Mr. Tuman said.

“It pays politically to push immigration from the margins to the center,” Mr. Tuman said. He said Mr. Biden could talk about the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and the program to protect them “while also recognizing that there must be a compromise on border security.”

And like the general electorate in Nevada, Mr. Tuman said, Latino voters want to see progress on the economy, including job growth and lower housing costs.

During his housing speech in Las Vegas, Mr. Biden will again call on Congress to approve a mortgage relief loan that would offer first-time homeowners a $10,000 tax break. But Biden can do little to change mortgage rates – they are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. The average 30-year mortgage rate rose last fall from less than 3 percent in 2021 to almost 8 percent. Interest rates have fallen slightly this year, but have recently risen again and are now just below 7 percent.