This past weekend, the LA Times ran a story about the networks using more primetime Spanish to reach the burgeoning Latino population. (I was quoted in a similar story in the Financial Times.) While speaking Spanish may make perfect sense for the networks, it doesn’t mean that political consultants need to follow suit by doing more Spanish-language commercials. Spanish may be good for selling soap, but it is not the way to reach most Latino voters.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, only 18 percent of Latinos living in the United States vote. Put another way, the Latino electorate is a tiny subset of the Latino consumer market. What’s more, the Latino electorate doesn’t look anything like the consumer market.

Most Latino voters were born in the United States (72 percent), while less than half of the Latino population was born here (44 percent). The Latino electorate is older, more affluent, better educated and speaks much more English. A recent poll by my old firm, Greenberg Research, drives home why campaign professionals should not overemphasize the value of Spanish-language television commercials. In Greenberg’s June 2005 survey of likely 2006 Latino voters, just 5 percent of Latinos said they only watch TV in Spanish. In other words, only 1 out of every 20 Latino voters watches nothing but Spanish-language television. Another 7 percent say they watch more Spanish TV than English. Yet 37 percent of Latino voters say they only watch TV programs in English.

Democratic campaigns should be wary of thinking that Spanish-language media is the key to the Latino vote. Sure Spanish helps. In some jurisdictions it can be critical. But it is infinitely more important that a campaign figure out what to say to the disparate groups that make up their particular Latino electorate than it is for a campaign to speak to Latinos in Spanish. You don’t need to speak Spanish to reach Latinos. You need to have a message.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Blog, Latino Vote. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.