Prince William Reporter

The Latino vote could have a significant impact on the gubernatorial race in Virginia.

The 2020 election saw Latinos registering to vote in record numbers with 61.1% compared to 57.3% in 2016 of all Latino citizens 18 and older. The mark is also higher than the previous peak of 59.4% in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president.

Democrats have benefited from Latinos going to the polls as they were critical in helping President Joe Biden win some of the swing states in 2020. Bloomberg reported that Biden won two-thirds of Latino voters across the country in 2020, according to exit polls from Edison Research.

The Virginia governor’s race has been competitive thus far with Astrid Gamez tweeting that Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe has not rolled out a campaign, Latinos Con Terry, to target the demographic when Latinos were an emphasis in 2013. The Republican Party seems to have taken notice and wants Latinos to know that there is a candidate who will represent them.

“Glenn Youngkin quiere representar a todos los virginianos. ¡El será un gran gobernador!” translating to “Glenn Youngkin wants to represent all Virginians,” the Virginia GOP account tweeted.

Trying to seize on the opportunity that McAuliffe has given him by not extending an olive branch to the community, Youngkin is seeking to engage the state's growing Latino community through social media as he released a tweet in Spanish, announcing that his website is bilingual.

Youngkin has also engaged Latino voters by embracing Salvadoran day, which could help him at the polls, A political experiment showed that bilingual mailing in the state increased voter turnout by 1.4 percentage points in the 2015 general election.