Qualified to Vote Understanding the Latino American voting bloc reveals not only its growth and influence, but also insights about the nation’s Latino population, its consumer buying power and its effect on future elections. According to the latest calculations, 27 million Latino Americans are eligible to vote for 2016 presidential, US Senate, US House of Representatives, state and local candidates, which is approximately 12% of all American citizens eligible to vote. More importantly, approximately 3.4 million Latino Americans will be 18 by November and eligible to vote, or 14% of the total Latino American population, compared to 6% of new Caucasian American and Asian American and 9% of African American voters.

2012 Patterns From 2012 to 2014, the number of eligible Latino American voters increased 7.6%, from 23.3 to 25.1 million. By comparison, eligible Caucasian American voters only increased 6%, while African Americans increased 3.1%, and Asian Americans 13.9%. For the 2012 presidential election, 59% of Latino Americans were registered to vote, and 48% voted. This was the largest gap of the four major ethnicities, but that is because larger percentages of older than younger Latino Americans were registered and voted. When comparing 2012 Latino American voters by gender, more women than men voted overall and among those 18–24, 25–44 and 45–64; however, more men than women voted in the two oldest age groups: 65–74 and 75+.

Language Differences Much greater percentages of Latino Americans who are English-dominant and bilingual are currently registered to vote, compared to those Spanish-dominant, at 76%, 54% and 27%, respectively. In an interesting reversal of this trend, 67% of probable 2016 Latino American voters who are Spanish-dominant say they will vote Democrat, compared to 38% of those English-dominant and 59% of those bilingual. 53% of Spanish-dominant Latino Americans say their affiliation is Democrat, compared to 62% bilingual and 35% English-dominant. Among those stating an Independent affiliation, 39% are English-dominant, 17% bilingual and 36% Spanish-dominant.

A Democrat or Independent Preference Not only are Latino American voters younger – and will continue to skew younger –, but also more of them have been born in the US, speak English more than Spanish and have more education. All of which will bring more of them into the political mainstream. The same March 2016 Harris Poll found that 52% of Latino Americans claimed Democrat party affiliation, which is only surpassed by African Americans’ 73% affiliation with the Democratic Party. Among all Latino Americans, 56% consider themselves Independents; however, 35% of those who are English-dominant lean Democrat and 46% are Independents. More bilinguals and Spanish-dominant are Independents, 62% and 60%, respectively.

Advertising Strategies According to a Nielsen 2014–2015 survey, 18–34 Latino Americans were 14% more likely than 18–34 Caucasian Americans to view any broadcast TV content during the past 7 days, which should help you convince political campaigns to use TV to reach these critical voters. It’s also clear by the information in this Profiler that a majority of political ads targeting Latino Americans should be in the English language, but some part of the voice-over and/or on-screen graphics could also be in Spanish. Although a majority of Latino Americans consider themselves Independents, a plurality of them think the Democratic Party will do the best job of addressing the major issues in the table on page 2 of the Profiler, which could be the basis for one or more TV messages.

New Media Strategies Instagram may be the most efficient social media site to reach younger and older Latino Americans, since 2014–2015 Nielsen research found those 18–34 were 21% more likely and those 35 and older 70% more likely to be on Instagram than Caucasian Americans. Again, it’s important for political campaigns to create and post content that is both English-dominant and Spanish-dominant and to use the other language in some portion of content targeting those who are more likely to speak the other language. With video content so popular among young adults of any ethnicity, political campaigns may want to record short videos of Latino American volunteers involved in registration drives to generate excitement about registering and providing local voter registration information.