8602376263?profile=originalMitt Romney's presidential campaign is trying to end the deficit it's running with Latino voters by stepping up its outreach efforts.

President Barack Obama leads the presumptive Republican nominee by 40 percentage points among Latinos, according to the latest Pew Research Center poll.

In 2008, Obama carried two-thirds of the Latino vote, and just this week, the Obama re-election campaign released four Spanish-language ads.

The Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic outreach, Bettina Inclan, spoke to NPR's Scott Simon on Weekend Edition to explain how Republicans expect to close that gap.

Inclan acknowledges that the GOP has a lot to of work to do to connect with Hispanics. This week, the RNC announced the appointment of six Hispanic outreach directors in the key swing states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia.

"The reason that we are putting people on the ground is because each of these communities is different. Hispanics are not a monolithic vote. They're different communities with different priorities," says Inclan.

She says Republicans can gain ground by focusing the discussion on the economy. A Pew Research Survey conducted last December, found that half of the Latino voters surveyed considered jobs to be an extremely important issue; only a third of those surveyed considered immigration an extremely important issue. READ MORE

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