Latino voters swing back

America, Actually with Astead Herndon

This episode of 'America, Actually' explores the dramatic political shift among Latino voters in 2024, who swung right but are now reconside

Key takeaways

• Latino voters are no longer a monolith—subgroups across origins and demographics shifted right in 2024 but remain highly responsive to policy and cultural connection.
• Campaigns often fail by simply translating English ads into Spanish, missing authentic engagement with media habits like YouTube content in Spanglish.

Main topics

• Latino voter swing in 2024
• Economic priorities over immigration fears

Notable quotes

"We should be called the swinging giant, not the sleeping giant." – Stephanie Valencia

Conclusion

Latino voters are pivotal and dynamic—not predictable or monolithic. T

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) If you dig into the numbers, one trend becomes undeniable since 2024. Latino voters have turned on Donald Trump. Take a look at this data. According to Pew Research, only 66 % of the Latino voters who backed Trump in the last presidential election still approve of his job performance. That's down 27 percentage points since the start of his second term. And these days, 68 % of Latinos fully support Democrats. That's a whopping 43-point swing since the last presidential election. So what's driving this drastic shift? And how has our understanding of the Latino electorate changed over the last few cycles? Speaker 2 (0:41) Latinos often get given the title the sleeping giant. We should be called the swinging giant based on how much shift we have seen election to election. Speaker 8 (0:51) This week on America Actually, I talked to Stephanie Valencia. co-founder and president of Equis, and she'll break down the Latino electorate. Plus, Democratic congressional candidate Manny Rutinal. What do politicians and parties get wrong about Latino voters? Let's dig in. Speaker 1 (1:17) I'm Ina Garten. I have a new podcast called Happy Hour with Ina. Each week, I'm inviting a really interesting guest to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with actors, chefs, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire. So grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. You can watch by searching for Happy Hour with Ina on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don't we all need to have more fun? Speaker 5 (1:54) Hey, everybody. Cassidy Hubberth here. This week on And Mom, we spoke with Grammy award-winning musician Corinne Bailey Ray about taking her kids on tour, becoming a widow at 29, and how she felt about having a home birth. Check out the latest episode of And Mom wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:13) When we talk about the Latino electorate, what are we actually talking about? Mexican-Americans in California are way different than Cubans in Miami, and someone who lives on the Texas border may share little in common with Latinos in Michigan or Wisconsin, which is why I wanted to talk to Stephanie Valencia. Stephanie co-founded Equis, a political research firm that digs into the nitty-gritty when it comes to Latino voters. And in 2024, they published the Latino Playbook, which is full of great nuggets about how political campaigns can reach this all-important voting bloc. So what do campaigns get wrong? What are the misconceptions when it comes to Latino voters? And how has Donald Trump changed everything? Let's ask Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 7 (3:01) We appreciate your Speaker 8 (3:02) time. Speaker 2 (3:02) Thank you for having me. Speaker 8 (3:04) Okay, so Equis has called Latinos one of the last great wildcards in American politics. Is that because of some of the double-digit swings that we've seen among this voting group over the past few elections? Speaker 2 (3:16) Yes, it absolutely has to do with that. Latinos often get given the title the sleeping giant, which I just want to rid that out of everybody's vocabulary. We should be called the swinging giant. based on how much shift we have seen election to election. A third of Latinos consider themselves kind of independent or apolitical nonpartisan. And that's that swinging middle that really is deciding every single election. Speaker 8 (3:42) Obviously, when we talk about the Latino diaspora, that means a lot of stuff. I mean, how much should we consider this even a joint group amongst itself? Because when you mentioned, you know, a third of Latino voters consider themselves independent, part of my head goes to like, do we know specifics about that? Are we talking about South Americans or folks who come from Central America? Like places of origin seem to matter a lot here. What do we know about that makeup when we talk about the Latino electorate? Speaker 2 (4:11) There are probably, at this point in time, this has not always been true, but at this point in time that we find ourselves in, more in common across subgroups of country of origin. So we saw shifts among every subgroup of Latinos. So whether you were Puerto Rican, Cuban, Colombian, or Mexican in 2024, all of those groups shifted. Men shifted. All of those Speaker 8 (4:35) shifted to the right. Speaker 2 (4:36) All of those shifted to the right. And more people voted for Trump. So you even saw... that among gender. a lot of attention was paid to Latino men and whether or not Latino men shifted more. The truth is when you peel back the onion, you go back beyond 2024 and you actually look over the last 10 years, Latino women have shifted more over that period of time than men had. Men were already starting in a more conservative place. You're also seeing it among younger people. So there are still shifts happening among young people that happened toward the right as well. And I think it's really important for us to understand that, yes. Latinos are not a monolith. There are important nuances to understanding the issues you're talking about to a Cuban-American and an issue you're talking about to a Mexican-American. But the uniting factor is the economy, fundamentally. Everybody is experiencing the economy in a very challenged way, just like all Americans are right now. Speaker 8 (5:32) Yep, that makes sense. Your playbook gets into messengers and particularly like how we reach folks where they are. It makes a Spanish Spanglish distinction talking about the different types of media that Latino voters consume. I wanted to ask in that vein, what's the single biggest mistake campaigns make in terms of not reaching folks where they are? Speaker 2 (5:52) Oh, man, if I how long do we have so I can tell you, you know, they're they're really simple kind of unforced errors. I'm going to give a very, very concrete. simple example, but I think illustrates, look, I'm Latina. I grew up speaking mostly English, but I listened to Spanish language radio. I watch a lot of YouTube and on YouTube, I'm watching people like Carol G and Karin Leon. A lot of people, a lot of swing voters, Latino voters have the same media consumption habits that I do. And a lot of what you get media consultants doing when they develop a Spanish language ad. So the first problem or challenge that a lot of candidates make is they just simply translate their English ad into Spanish. And that is, to me, one of the biggest mistakes because there are a lot of things that people want to be communicating in Spanish that don't translate word for word. There are sayings in Spanish that don't translate directly from English or more direct ways you can communicate. Speaker 8 (6:49) I'm sure it immediately reads Google Translate rather than an original message for said community. Speaker 2 (6:54) Exactly. Exactly. So that's mistake number one. Mistake number two is when they're deploying that ad digitally. They're going to, as a proxy to talk to people, they're going to Spanish language browser settings. So they say, we don't want people who speak English to see the Spanish language ad. So the way they target that voter or try to find that set of voters is just by going to people who have Spanish language browser setting. Like I said. I don't have a Spanish language browser setting. Everything I consume online is set in English on Chrome, but I still watch a lot of content in Spanish on YouTube. So you're missing a voter like me who's going to see a Spanish language ad from a James Tallarico or a Manny Routinel and be turned on by it because I'm going to say like, hey, like that candidate speaking to our community, that candidate has enough respect to develop a Spanish language ad. We had done some testing, a couple of years ago that showed that over 70 % of Latinos who see an ad in Spanish think that party or candidate cares more about Latinos. That is interesting. It matters that much. It matters that much. Speaker 8 (8:01) I wanted to ask, stay in 2024 for a second longer. You all's research found that Project 2025 and Trump's kind of mass deportation was not at top of mind for most people, that they were thinking about the economy. I wanted to ask about that because I remember the RNC signs at the convention saying mass deportations now. I mean, one number says that 62 percent of Latinos now think that Trump wants to deport undocumented immigrants broadly. Why did it take till post-election to kind of? realize those threats of mass deportation were real, considering they were so front and center during his campaign. Speaker 2 (8:35) So I think this is really important for us as avid news consumers to understand. what it is that the average voter, and especially that voter who's coming in and out of elections, the kind of news they're consuming, right? What they were seeing on mainstream media, perhaps even Fox News at the time, was a focus on