**The following post comes from our DC-based colleague and FH Digital expert Mark Story.**
I was having lunch the other day with one of the thought leaders of the intersection of online and politics and I shared a thought that has been haunting me since the last electoral cycle: the “Hispanic vote.” We are both horrified that, as well as the political Web sites have done in pushing out information to discrete, segmented, target audiences, why is there a standard “en español” link – a one size fits all?
Let’s drill down the numbers like the campaign managers do:
- There were 122,267,553 votes cast in the 2004 presidential election.
- Both the number of Latinos registered to vote (9.3 million) and the number of Latinos who cast ballots (7.6 million) in November 2004 marked increases of political participation over the 2000 election that were larger than for any other ethnic or racial group in percentage terms.
- A study from the Pew Hispanic Center posits that 78 percent of Hispanics online are English dominant, 32 percent of them are Spanish dominant, and 76 percent are bilingual.
- So you reach the English-speakers with English, the Spanish speakers with Spanish, but what about the 76 percent who are bilingual? What do you have to say, and in which language to those 7,068,000 people? And how to you demonstrate that you get them?
Given the segmented nature of the Internet and the further segmentation of the Spanish-speaking communities, carving up the potential electorate into chunks who will receive information only in English or only in Spanish is a grave tactical error. Both Republican and Democratic campaigns would be well served by developing sections of their Web sites that are targeted to young, bilingual potential voters who are often spoken of as “The Holy Grail” of political campaigns.
A terrific example is the online version of Latina Style magazine. Is it in English? Yes. Is it specifically targeted to a slice of the United States-based Hispanic audience wanting to receive information in English? Yes. It is right on the mark, in terms of delivering information for the female component of the 76 percent that Pew says is bilingual, and likely prefers to receive information in English with a “Latino/a flavor?” Heck, yes.
And not to beat a dead horse, but an additional, online-only example targeting a younger demo is www.vidagirl.com. In their own words ’VidaGIRL is the hip and informative English language online magazine and newsletter that celebrates the life, culture, style and spirit of today’s young Latinas and multi-cultural women.’
So why, with in an age of micro-targeting, data mining, sophisticated political operations spending millions of dollars a day, do political campaigns think that we exclusively hablamos inglés o español?
Me pregunto por qué. I wonder why.
Mark Story
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One of the postings in yesterday’s La Politica.com focuses on the mistakes in the Spanish-language websites of the candidates. Another interesting site, to Mark’s point on language, is one Maribel found called http://www.votolatino.org.
Are you suggesting that political websites make a third run at the Hispanic vote, via bilingual websites?
If only 6% of voters are Hispanic, and the English and Spanish versions of political websites are reaching 110% of Hispanics (78% English dominant + 32% Spanish dominant), it becomes difficult to imagine that whatever portion of the Hispanic market aren’t comfortable in either English or Spanish comprise enough of the electorate to worthwhile to candidates.
But if all 44 million Hispanics voted…
Thanks for your comment, Danny.
I was suggesting that while bilingual sites have value, where political candidates are missing an opportunity is in providing culturally-relevant information in a “Latino style” for the 76 percent of voters who have self-identified as “Hispanic” first, but with a preference to receive information in English.
Having a section ONLY in English and ONLY in Spanish suggests that one size fits all. And with a politically growing voting block, it would be a good idea for candidates to develop sections in their sites targeted to Hispanics, but in English.
Mark