netneutrality blog

American citizens decided on last November the 4th who will hold 435 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate, along with 38 state and territorial governorships, 46 state legislatures and numerous state and local representative positions. Many eyes were to the Hispanic people. Right now, they are able to decide the elections in around 20% of the states.

Latino people in numbers

Latino Vote

The Hispanic population of the United States reaches 54 million, making them the nation’s largest ethnic minority. According to the recent numbers, 32 million of citizens have Mexican origins, 4.4 million Puerto Rican, 1.7 Salvadoran and 1.6 Cuban. With the sum of all of them, Latino people constituted 17% of the nation’s total population. In the last Midterms elections, 25.2 million Hispanics had the right to vote. However, Latinos tend to use the right to vote less than other ethnics, such as Afro-American. In 2010, only 31.2% of Hispanics voted, whereas the 44% of African American citizens voted. In this midterms, Latinos only represented the 10% of the totals votes from US citizens, although they are the 17% of total population. The main reason of the low percentage in participation is the voters average age: young people tend to vote less than older ones and Latino origin citizens are one of the cultural backgrounds with more youngsters (33% of Hispanic eligible voters are in between ages 18 to 29). Political parties know the reality and they put effort to get Latino votes.

 

Internet and Social Media Power

At least 28.7 million of Hispanics in the US are using Social Media regularly, which represents the half of the total population. For that reason, it is not strange that politicians put a lot of effort to spread their messages through the net only addressed to Latino people. Republicans and Democrats are trying to get the attention of the Hispanic minority. And being the majority of Latino voters young, they spend more time in Internet and social networks than any other minority.

In total, 6 of the 36 of the candidates who were running for Governors and won, focused their campaign for the Latino segment as their own websites were published as well in Spanish version.

Around 30% of Arizona’s citizens are Latinos. That explains why Fred DuVal, the Democrat candidate has a Spanish version of his website. Although a great part of Hispanics voters bet for him, DuVal finally lost the votes. The same strategy went well for the Governor of Nevada, the Republican Brian Sandoval who was re-elected on the 4th of November. Sandoval, who has Hispanic origins, also was the first Latino federal judge in Nevada’s history. In his twitter, he wrote in a few occasions in Spanish and retweeted the Hispanic TV channel Univision’s tweets. Greg Abbot, Republican elected candidate for Texas’ Governor, also had a Spanish version of the website.

Another state with an important Latino presence is Florida. The Republican Governor, Rick Scott, and his Democrat rival, Charlie Crist, did his first debate in the Hispanic Television Channel Telemundo 51. Both of them also tweeted several times in Spanish with a great reaction from Latino voters. Crist’s right hand, Annette Taddeo who was born in Colombia, is a very active twitter user and the major part of her messages are in Spanish.

Hispanic voters in Colorado helped Obama to win in 2008, as well as in 2012. However, in the 2014 midterms the things have changed. Mike Coffman, a Republican candidate, emphasized the fact he is learning Spanish, with the aim to get attention of Latino citizens.

These kind of actions could have helped Republicans to earn 6% in Hispanic voters since 2010. However, most of Latino citizens still supports Democrats, according to the recent pulls, 57% of Hispanics tend to vote them. The fight for Latino votes has just started.

 

Messages to win Latino votes