Consuming English-language media makes U.S. Hispanic voters twice as likely to vote Republican, statistically speaking, according to a new poll.
SO WHAT
Democrats’ concerns about Spanish-language disinformation appear to be misplaced.
THE NUMBERS
A WPA Intelligence/Visto Media poll published Wednesday by the nonprofit group Bienvenido compared Hispanic voters who mostly get their news in English to those who mostly get their news in Spanish.
Hispanic voters who primarily consume English-language media aren’t just more likely to vote Republican, they also tend to care more about GOP priorities and less about Democratic ones, per the survey.
- Inflation, for example, is the top concern among all Hispanic voters, but only 11th on the list for Spanish-consumers.
- On the other hand, Spanish-consumers rank racism as their third-biggest concern, whereas all Hispanic voters put the issue at No. 11.
THE NARRATIVE
With Hispanics shifting toward the GOP, Democrats have been sounding the alarm about disinformation targeting Spanish-speakers.
- “It’s concerning, because we’re already starting to see the same patterns we saw leading up to the 2018 and 2020 elections, when the level of disinformation began to slowly accelerate,” Democratic strategist Evelyn Pérez-Verdía told NBC News earlier this year.
- In April, a group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Facebook urging the social media giant to take action against Spanish-language “disinformation” on the platform
- Another group of congressional Democrats sent a letter to the Signal Foundation in May asking the encrypted messaging app company “to invest in preventive efforts to combat mis/disinformation” in Spanish.
The bottom line: According to the WPA-Visto poll, whatever information is driving Hispanics to the right appears to be coming from the same media the rest of America is consuming.