Once More, With Feeling: Latino Voters Watch English-Language TV
Democracy Corps (aka Greenberg Research) recently completed a nationwide poll of 984 Latino voters who are likely to vote in this year’s election for Congress. If I had given Stan Greenberg a dollar every time I quoted a finding from last year’s version of the same survey, I would have already paid back the salary I made working for him 7 years ago and then some. As can be seen in the graph above, this year’s survey reinforces the point made last year: Latino voters watch much more English-language television than they do Spanish-language television.
So why do Democratic strategists often insist on going after Latino voters with Spanish-language commercials instead of English-language ads? Sometimes, it’s because they have actual evidence that Spanish-speakers are a key segment of the electorate in a particular election, just like it was in the Southern California assembly race I discussed yesterday. This is exactly the right reason to do commercials in Spanish - because the data supports it.
Unfortunately, more often than not, Democratic strategists are swayed by rhetoric such as the following, written by Hispanic Media Executive Jose Cancela after the first immigration rally in Los Angeles:
Study after study shows that 79 percent of second-generation Latinos speak Spanish and, in a stunning reversal of patterns among earlier immigrant groups, more than a third of the third-generation Hispanics do. The result: an exclusive Hispanic U.S.A. Inc study shows that the number of Spanish-dominant and bilingual Latinos in the United States will actually increase by 45 percent over the next two decades, adding 12.5 million more Spanish-speakers by 2025. But even those numbers miss an even more important reality of Hispanics in the U.S.A.: You motivate us by speaking to us in the language of our music. We like to be courted in the language we make love in, for some that is in English, for most of us, it’s in Espanol.
The reasons are simple. Spanish reaches us on a visceral level. It’s about heart, home, passion and a thousand other feelings that can not be described. English connects to our brains, but Spanish connects to our hearts. Spanish isn’t just the language we speak; it’s the language that speaks to us. So when the organizers of the rallies wanted to get Latinos to fill the streets, they did it in Spanish. Not just for the reach, but for the impact. The stunning success of the call to action might, at first blush, seem to be a victory for the power of Spanish-language media. And, at one level, it is. But on another, much more universal and significant level, it proves that Espanol is here to stay.
Here’s the thing to keep in mind when you see that kind of talk. The numbers quoted by Cancela refer to the Latino population, not the Latino electorate. The Latino population is Spanish-dominant; the Latino electorate is not. Spanish may or may not speak to the heart of Latino voters, but it’s not going to speak to anything if the Latino voter never actually sees the commercial. And as the Greenberg poll shows, Latino voters nationwide watch English-language television.
