With midterm elections on the horizon, Americans are subject to a flurry of Democratic and Republican ads. As the second-largest voting bloc in 2020, Latino voters are expected to play a significant role in the 2022 elections. They are therefore a key target group.
One non-profit, Voto Latino, aims to fight political disinformation and communicate with self-identified moderate Latino voters through a series of ads.
Ameer Patel, vice-president of programs for Voto Latino, said: “We’ve seen a lot of Republicans make headway through disinformation campaigns targeting Latino voters, basically through disinformation narratives that are calling Democrats socialists who are trying to erode trust in institutions, calling Democrats unpatriotic.
“We’ve seen a lot of inroads Republicans have made in some of those disinformation theories and so what we wanted to do was basically debunk some of those and promote Democratic messaging.”
Based on a mid-May poll of 1,600 Latinos in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Voto Latino and Rising Tide Interactive, a political strategy company, developed 10 ads about issues voters said were most important to them.
According to a Voto Latino memo reviewed by the Guardian, the issues include taxes, immigration, pandemic relief, small business relief, infrastructure, child tax credits and abortion rights.
“There’s been a lot of political communication that comes across as overly promotional or polished,” Patel said. “We’ve seen those ads not have high effect sizes.”
Patel said Voto Latino spent a month gathering stories from Latino voters. The resulting ads were tested in online mixed panels, with participants recruited through online ads. Respondents were initially limited to people self-identified as Latino, then to those who also self-identified as politically moderate.
Patel said: “Basically we were trying to get them on the record to talk about issues that matter to them, what they see in politics … These are real people, these weren’t actors. Furthermore we wanted it to be a testimonial-style video instead of some of those voiceovers that are more polished.
“For a lot of these people, they’ve never done that before. You can see [some of them] are visibly uncomfortable in front of the camera and so we feel that all of those things would basically contribute to the likelihood of success here and make that seem more genuine.”
Each ad is 30 seconds long. In one ad, on taxes, a young man named Felipe wears a dark polo shirt as he looks into the camera and says: “My parents broke their back working multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
“It made me angry that Republicans passed a law to give millionaires and billionaires a tax break while my parents paid real money … Your vote matters and when you vote for the Democrats, it helps hardworking families like mine to get by.”
Voto Latino measured the effectiveness of each ad based on questions in three categories, compared to a placebo ad.
The three categories were care, trust and vote choice. The questions concerned whether Democrats or Republicans truly care about the voter and his or her best interests more than the other party; whether the voter trusts Democrats or Republicans to deliver on issues that matter most to him or herself; and if the November 2022 general election were held today, would the voter vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for US representative in their district.
According to Voto Latino, the ads proved very effective at increasing Democratic favorability on trust, care and vote choice, especially when it came to abortion and religion.
The group memo said: “In certain instances, these ads had a lift upwards of 26% compared to the placebo group. In general, results recommend using the “Abortion/Religion” or “Taxes” ads when communicating to moderate Latinos.
The chief executive of Voto Latino, Maria Teresa Kumar, said: “The numbers we’re seeing are the kinds of results that can transform a race. Latino voters are positioned to help Democrats win some of the most important contests in November. The question is whether or not our groups decide to engage with them.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity; we just need to take advantage of it.”
