{"id":13441,"date":"2023-08-08T17:58:34","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T17:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13441"},"modified":"2023-08-08T17:58:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T17:58:34","slug":"one-ad-three-accents-how-democrats-aim-to-win-latino-votes-for-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13441","title":{"rendered":"One ad, three accents: How Democrats aim to win Latino votes for Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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The Spanish-language ads for Joe Biden used the same slogan to contrast him with President Trump \u2014 \u201cLos cuentos no pagan las cuentas,\u201d<\/em> a play on words that roughly means: \u201cTelling stories won\u2019t pay the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the narrator for the version of the ad that aired in Miami had a Cuban accent. In Orlando, Fla., the accent was Puerto Rican. In Phoenix, it was Mexican.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is hoping to capture Florida and other pivotal states<\/a> by pushing Latino turnout rates higher than when Hillary Clinton was defeated in 2016. A key to doing that is a deeper understanding of Latino voters\u2019 backgrounds thanks to new advancements in \u201cmicro-targeting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means using data modeling of voter populations to produce ads and customize outreach aimed at individual ethnic groups within the larger Latino community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe now have the capacity to do sub-ethnicity modeling,\u201d Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, whose parents immigrated to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe now have the capacity to do sub-ethnicity modeling,\u201d Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, said on a recent conference call with Biden advisors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you meet someone named Perez or Alex or Rodr\u00edguez in Florida, and you want them to vote for Joe Biden, one of the most important things you ought to learn about them is, are they Rodr\u00edguez, Alex or Perez de<\/em> Venezuela, de la<\/em> Republica Dominicana, de<\/em> Cuba, de<\/em> Puerto Rico?\u201d he said. \u201cDe<\/em>\u201d means \u201cfrom\u201d in Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Campaigns often target voters with individualized messaging. It\u2019s why presidential candidates stress one theme while trying to woo Black voters in the Midwest and another for white suburban women in the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, top Democrats are betting that subtle tweaks could pay big dividends. Latino turnout in 2016 fell to 47.6% of eligible voters in that group, down nearly three percentage points from 2008, according to U.S. Census surveys. Improving that, they argue, could potentially flip Florida and tighten the race in once steadfastly Republican Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s campaign calls hyper-competitive locales such as Florida \u201c1% states,\u201d and Perez points to the Democratic Party now being able to micro-target by sub-ethnicity as the reason why the party can be more successful with Latinos than in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It means \u201creally understanding that we\u2019re not a monolith,\u201d said Julie Ch\u00e1vez Rodr\u00edguez, the granddaughter of civil rights leader Cesar Ch\u00e1vez and a senior advisor to Biden\u2019s campaign. \u201cIt\u2019s not about taking an English campaign ad and translating it into Spanish and considering that Latino outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has ground to make up after strong Latino support lifted rival Bernie Sanders to Democratic primary victories in California and Nevada. Rodr\u00edguez said Biden had since hired more Latinos throughout every level of his campaign, while ensuring they\u2019re from different backgrounds. That allows for reaching voters using different cultural nuances and forms of Spanish, which can vary greatly by country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may yet be a tall order. Trump has used his sizable campaign cash advantage over Biden to bolster his reelection campaign\u2019s Latino outreach for more than a year. The Republican Party has itself sought to tailor different messages to voters with roots throughout Latin America. A natural fit is older Cuban Americans, who tend to be more conservative and fervently anti-communist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar views can be found among some Venezuelans in the U.S. who ardently oppose President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>. That was part of the reason why Trump, who recently faced a backlash after suggesting he might meet with Maduro, quickly backtracked on the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bertica Cabrera Morris, a Latinos for Trump advisory board member, said heavy Democratic reliance on sub-ethnicity modeling could seem patronizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019re doing is micro-targeting instead of realizing we\u2019re just like the rest of the population,\u201d Cabrera Morris said. \u201cHow dare you suggest my problems are different from yours?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrea Mercado, executive director of the voter mobilization organization New Florida Majority, said that when it came to campaigns better understanding Latinos \u201cany advance is welcome\u201d but that simply offering ads modified for different audiences wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for the necessary investments to persuade and mobilize Latinos at all levels of elected office,\u201d Mercado said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, individualized messaging may prove especially vital in Florida, which has a deeply diverse Latino population encompassing people with roots in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, as well as Venezuela and other South American countries, Nicaragua and throughout Central America. Florida has more than 3 million eligible Latino voters, about 20% of total eligible voters statewide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democratic consultant Colin Rogero recalls once producing two versions of a Miami political ad featuring a grandmother talking kitchen-table issues that were identical except what she cooked. For Cuban neighborhoodsm it was black beans and rice. For Puerto Rican areas, it was red beans and rice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to deliver a tortilla ad to Cubans in south Florida,\u201d Rogero said. \u201cThey\u2019ll go, \u2018What the hell is this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Florida Democratic Party has completed a model of unregistered Puerto Ricans who have moved to the state in recent years and whose numbers swelled following Hurricane Maria\u2019s devastation in 2017<\/a>, said executive director Juan Pe\u00f1alosa. The party used that to send out a mailer featuring a photo of Trump jokingly tossing rolls of paper towels to Puerto Ricans at an aid center after the storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pe\u00f1alosa said party staffers and volunteers had created customized talking points to reach different Latino communities, such as Biden opposing Maduro. Those can be used while conducting phone banks, which, along with texting and digital efforts, have become more vital as the coronavirus outbreak has virtually suspended in-person campaigning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In places such as Texas and California, Latino populations are mostly Mexican American. Still, targeted messaging can be used to better connect with pockets of Latinos in states that aren\u2019t traditionally known for having many of them: Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Pennsylvania, as well as Latinos of many backgrounds in Milwaukee\u2019s suburbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lorella Praeli, Clinton\u2019s 2016 director of Latino outreach, said Latinos were long viewed as natural Democratic-leaning voters who simply needed to be mobilized. That often meant waiting until too late before an election to launch simple \u201cget out the vote\u201d initiatives, rather than organizing long-term, more expensive efforts to ensure that voters have a personal stake in voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is absolutely an improvement, and it is part of an evolution of really working to get it right,\u201d Praeli, president of Community Change Action, said of sub-ethnicity modeling. \u201cWhat you do with the data is how you get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Associated Press The Spanish-language ads for Joe Biden used the same slogan to contrast him with President Trump — “Los cuentos no pagan las cuentas,” a play on words that roughly means: “Telling stories won’t pay […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-13441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13442,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13441\/revisions\/13442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}