Put Your Money Where Your Campaign Is: Hispanic Voters Are the Key To the 2024 Election

By: Kathy Whitlock, VP of Strategy and Insights at TelevisaUnivision

With nearly a month remaining until November 5th, you surely must know by now that Latino voters are truly up for grabs in this year’s election. News story after news story continues to show how both Democrats and Republicans need to win over Latino voters to have any chance at winning. Our voters make up a large portion of the electorate in critical swing states like Arizona and Nevada and could be the margin of victory in states like Georgia and North Carolina IF campaigns deign to connect with them. And yet, neither party has made a concerted and heartfelt effort to do so.

How can even a small number of Latino voters be so powerful? In the highly contentious race for Pennsylvania, Latinos have been named the deciding vote and victory could come down to the state’s nearly 400,000 registered Latino voters. In 2020, the Presidential race in PA was decided by less than 81,000 votes—a significantly smaller margin than the more than 318,000 Latino voters projected to turn out in the state this year.

Political candidates that speak to Latino voters in ways that prove they truly “get” their problems stand a stronger chance of winning than those that leave them out of the conversation or worse: include them as a perfunctory check the box. Authenticity counts when it comes to building trust with this voter.

Research shows that, like all voters, they want to hear what you plan to do to make their lives better. And since 48% of Hispanics have kids under 18 living at home versus just 31% of Non-Hispanics, you need to include their families in the equation: they’re voting for far more than just themselves. Three in five Latinos across key battleground states say that political parties and candidates who advertise in Spanish are proving they want their vote. And because they are inherently social, they’re more likely than non-Latinos to say that they share political ads (not surprising, since they see so few of them). A new learning this year: Latinos are more likely to say that a political ad changed their mind.

Still, historically, less than two percent of political advertising spending has gone towards Spanish-language media, even though these voters account for more than twenty percent of the U.S. population. Spanish is the language of the heart and the head, and never has it been more necessary than when making a decision about the country’s future. We’ve seen firsthand how political campaigns are not investing enough in this critical demographic. We’ve also seen firsthand the difference that political advertising makes. And with so many Latino voters in swing states still undecided, or planning to vote early, campaigns need to act now…not two weeks before the election.

The difference between winning and losing for political campaigns up and down the ballot will depend on whether or not they are able to convince Latinos across the country to give them their vote. My advice for political campaigns: put your money where your campaign is. The numbers don’t lie, political advertising works. Latino voters are ready to turn out. Like a fiesta, invite them in and they will come.