NEW YORK CITY - As Latinos have become the largest minority set to vote in the 2024 Presidential elections, candidates and other parties are racing to engage with the electorate. The competition for the demographic's vote gathered even more pace this week with the launch of two major nonpartisan efforts, a new report by Axios shows.
TelevisaUnivision and the Hispanic Federation, along with other nonprofit organizations, announced they are partnering on a wide-ranging nonpartisan campaign to mobilize Latino voters through registration drives, informational workshops, and phone banks.
"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.
A coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday announced a national campaign to push for newly naturalized citizens to vote in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania— key swing states.
Similarly, Telemundo last month announced Decision 2024, a news and civic engagement initiative that includes comprehensive elections coverage, polls, live events, fact-checking and voter resources.
TelevisaUnivision and the Hispanic Federation are also launching efforts to battle misinformation, a trend that Latinos have been shown to be more susceptible to.
Faced with widespread Spanish language misinformation, Miranda says, "it was very important that TelevisaUnivision is committed to fight misinformation and disinformation and not be a vehicle of bad information."
Spanish-language media plays a significant role in how Latinos interact with information and news in general. In fact, about 21% say they get their news in Spanish, while 23% say they consume it in both English and Spanish, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.
Teri Arversu, 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.
These efforts come as both Democrats and Republicans are vying for the Latino vote in these elections. Axios reports that both parties consider Latino voters, especially in swing states, crucial to their success, but advocates have long said registering Latinos to vote comes with unique challenges.
As for the Democrat side, both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have conducted several Hispanic media interviews. Biden also gave a lengthy sit down interview with Univision recently, a rare move considering he has avoided doing so with other national news outlets.
The Biden-Harris campaign has also invested $30 million in a spring media buy, using a mix of Spanish-language accents as well as Spanglish, which tends to resonate with young Latino voters.
Third-party candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also launched a campaign to appeal to the Latino vote. He kicked off the revived "Viva Kennedy!" effort in March. The initiative seeks to register voters under RFK's We the People Party, releasing Spanish-language ads and setting up clubs across the country as JFK did.
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