The race to engage the estimated 36.2 million U.S. Latinos who are eligible to vote in this year’s election hit full steam this week with the launch of two major nonpartisan efforts.
Why it matters: Latino turnout in 2020 hovered around 54% — the lowest of all racial and ethnic groups.
- Both Republicans and Democrats consider Latino voters, especially in swing states, crucial to their success, but advocates have long said registering Latinos to vote comes with unique challenges.
Driving the news: TelevisaUnivision and the Hispanic Federation, along with other nonprofit organizations, announced Tuesday they are partnering on a wide-ranging nonpartisan campaign to mobilize Latino voters through registration drives, informational workshops, and phone banks, and by battling misinformation.
- A coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday also announced a national campaign to push for newly naturalized citizens to vote in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — key swing states.
- Telemundo last month announced Decisión 2024, a news and civic engagement initiative that includes comprehensive elections coverage, polls, live events, fact-checking and voter resources.
What they’re saying: “We know that for communities of color, especially for our community, nonpartisan efforts are incredibly important in their process of educating themselves about the voting process in the United States,” says Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation.
- Faced with widespread Spanish language misinformation, Miranda says, “it was very important that TelevisaUnivision committed to fight misinformation and disinformation and not be a vehicle of bad information.”
The big picture: Spanish-language media plays a significant role in the lives of Latinos — about 21% say they get their news in Spanish, while 23% say they consume it in both English and Spanish, per a recent Pew Research Center study.
- Teri Arvesú, senior vice president of social impact and sustainability for TelevisaUnivision, says Spanish-language media is crucial because so much voter education content is in English and because the network — and critically, the nonpartisan advocacy groups it’s partnering with — has built a relationship of trust with Latinos.
- Arvesú says the network’s civic engagement efforts in 2020 netted 770 million impressions and 1.4 million new voters. This year the network wants “to do more than that,” she says.
- “But the real test is that when it comes to calculating turnout, that our community is turning out. To me, that’s the biggest marker of success.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect other nonprofit organizations are involved in the Hispanic Federation and TelevisaUnivision campaign.
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