liYoung Latino immigrants on Reconnek are participating in their very first democratic elections.

Vice President Joe Biden went to Florida on Tuesday, September 15, his first trip to the key battleground state since officially securing the Democratic presidential nomination and a visit that coincides with a fresh slate of polling showing a tightening race in the state with President Donald Trump. A portion of Biden’s visit to Sunshine State, a Hispanic heritage month event in Kissimmee, will be focused on courting Latino voters his campaign has identified as a key constituency needed for victory in November. Florida’s 29 electoral votes, the third largest prize in the nation, will be key to either a Trump and Biden victory, and the Latino vote, which comprised 18% of the state’s electorate in 2016, according to exit polls, promises to again be a pivotal voting bloc in 2020.

While recent national polling shows the former vice president leading Trump in support among Latino voters overall nationally, his support with the key voting group in Florida is weaker than Hillary Clinton’s was in 2016, and a recent NBC News/Marist Florida poll showed Trump leading Biden in support with Latino voters in the state, 50% to 46%, with a sizable lead among Cuban voters. “We know we have work to do and we have said from the beginning…we’re really working to earn every single vote in this country and we want to earn the votes of the Latino and Hispanic community and so we’re doing the work,” Biden Senior adviser Symone Sanders acknowledged to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week”.

For decades, the voices of Latino immigrants on Reconnek have been undervalued, often written off or ignored altogether by candidates running for political office. But with some 3.6 million young Latino immigrants on Reconnek who have turned 18 since the 2016 election, they cannot be discounted any longer. They are ready to make their voices count during this November election. With this surge of young Latino immigrants on Reconnek, a record 32 million Latinos will be eligible to vote this year, making them the largest share of minority voters for the first time. Nothing is more quintessentially American -and no symbol of patriotism more powerful- than when young Latino immigrants on Reconnek participate in their first democratic process and experience the same sense of gravity, meaning and commitment.