Contemporary Chicano/Latino Studies political science

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Chapter 4

noW you see us, noW you don’ t: t he impL ic at ions of poL i t ic a L

pa r t icipat ion L agging popuL at ion groW t h

With Sylvia Manzano and Adrian Pantoja

Somewhere between 11.2 million and 12.2 million Latinos voted in the November 2012 election.1 That we don’t know for sure is no surprise; not all states keep records of the race and ethnicity of voters, so our own es- timates are derived from those jurisdictions where we do have this infor- mation, as well as from analysis of the Current Population Survey (CPS) data, exit polls, voter registration changes by location, and other data.

About half of all the Latinos who could have voted in 2012 did not— that is, among the eligible population, Latino voter turnout is hovering around 50%. According to the 2010 CPS, the voter registration rate is 68.2% (about ten points less than the rate for non-Hispanic whites and African Americans), and the turnout of registered Latino voters is about 70% (again, about ten points less than for others). Of course, this rate fluc- tuates by election.

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Barreto, M., & Segura, G. M. (2014). Latino america : How america's most dynamic population is poised to transform the politics of the nation. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com Created from csupomona on 2020-02-25 13:20:02.

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54 Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura

A number of groups have performed heroically in registering Latino voters. Early in the Chicano rights period of the 1960s and 1970s, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project led the way. Since then, other groups, including Mi Familia Vota and Voto Latino, have joined the effort, and multifaceted civil rights organizations, like the National Coun- cil of La Raza (NCLR), have participated as well. Even Spanish-language media participates in the widely recognized Ya Es Hora campaign. In ad- dition, many state and local groups have joined in this work.

Registering any group of voters is hard work, and the task is compli- cated by how rapidly the Latino population and citizenry are growing. By the time 1,000 new voters are registered, there may be 2,000 more waiting. Under-registration leads to under-turnout, the effects of which are easy to identify—Latinos project significantly less political power than their numbers might otherwise suggest—they swing fewer elections, hold fewer seats, and grab the policy attention of fewer elected officials.

Sidney Verba and his colleagues have offered three explanations for why people are driven to participate in politics: they have the resources to participate, they are recruited into politics, or they have some psycho- logical engagement with politics.2 These reasons for political participation may help us begin to understand why Latino participation in electoral politics is relatively low. Because it requires time, attention, cognitive re- sources, and money, politics is a luxury that ranks well below more basic needs in the hierarchy of concerns of those with scant resources. Not sur- prisingly, then, political scientists have long found that those with fewer resources, regardless of race, are less likely to participate—and be influen- tial—in politics. Working-class whites, for example, vote less frequently than well-to-do whites, more highly educated individuals vote more than less educated people, and so on.

The work on minority voters echoes this long-held finding, with a ca- veat. That is, most work on the political behavior of African Americans and Hispanics repeatedly identifies resource constraints as the principal individual-level factor in undermining minority electoral strength.3 Afri- can Americans have closed the gap primarily to the extent that they have used racial identity as an alternative resource.4 That is, African Ameri- cans overperform relative to their resources, but overall relatively lower

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55Latino America

incomes and educational achievement levels—the product of generations of discrimination, unequal opportunity, and ongoing manifestations of each—have significantly disadvantaged African Americans and Hispanics in the electoral arena.

Later in this chapter, we discuss the six focus groups conducted by Latino Decisions in Houston, Los Angeles, and Fresno to get some insight into Latino nonparticipation in electoral politics. Participating in these groups were a variety of Latino Americans who either stopped participating in our electoral system or never started at all. For several different reasons, each expressed significant doubts about electoral participation. For example, Ra- fael, a middle-aged man from Houston,5 is not registered to vote and, as will soon become evident, is not a fan of the US political system. Anita, a smart and surprisingly informed participant in our study who lives in California, is the daughter of a political family and is registered to vote, but has lost interest in the system. Each illustrates some of the many challenges faced by Latino leaders in mobilizing higher electoral involvement.

We begin by focusing on four factors that we believe are critical to Latino under-registration and lower voter turnout: citizenship and nativity; age; socioeconomic status, including income and education; and mobilization efforts by parties and candidates. We show that those with resources—time, information, cognitive skills, and motivation—are more likely to get regis- tered and to vote. Then we turn our attention to the more social and psy- chological determinants of political participation, including group identity.

me A n s , mo T i vAT i o n , A n d o P P o r T u n i T y— ho W ( L i m i T e d ) r e s o u r c e s L i m i T L AT i n o e L e c T o r A L P A r T i c i P AT i o n

The demographic circumstances of Latinos are unique. Noncitizens gen- erally cannot vote,6 and more than one-third of all Latino adults in the United States are not US citizens (either because they have not met the requirements or because they have chosen not to naturalize, for a variety of possible reasons).

Noncitizenship is certainly a huge and obvious barrier to electoral strength, but even foreign birth among citizens can undermine Latino po- litical strength. Foreign-born citizens—naturalized immigrants—generally

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come to the United States with only limited familiarity with the US politi- cal system, its key players, and US political history. Unlike those attending K–12 school in this country, naturalized citizens begin their engagement with the US political system as adults with almost no background informa- tion. Politically active people in the United States are familiar with a host of associations and patterns that are new—if not unknown—to the immigrant. Not knowing, for example, that Social Security is identified with Democrats and tax-cutting with Republicans—to say nothing of the civics-book rules governing our system—makes it much harder for the foreign-born citizen to acquire a party identification, prioritize issues, and choose candidates. The knowledge that most Americans have accumulated over a lifetime of school, news, conversations, and family socialization is knowledge that they can take for granted, but it must be learned wholly new by adult im- migrants, for whom the costs of doing so can reduce political participation.

For a long time naturalized citizens were significantly less likely to register and vote than US-born citizens.7 More recently, the politiciza- tion of immigration has motivated a wave of “political” naturalizations and higher voter turnout.8 But the costs of political participation—the costs of learning an entirely new political system—remain high for adult immigrants.

A second demographic obstacle, one less visible, is the age distribu- tion. Young people generally vote less, and Latinos are very young. Al- though many Latinos over the age of eighteen are foreign-born, the latest census found that about 93% of those under eighteen are US-born. That means that very young Latinos are heavily represented in the citizen population and will soon enough become eligible to vote. Using Census Bureau population numbers, we estimate that in each month of the year 2014 approximately 73,000 Latino citizens will turn eighteen and enter the eligible electorate.

How much younger are Latinos? As is immediately apparent in Figure 4.1, Latinos are significantly younger than other Americans, with a me- dian age almost eight years younger than African Americans and almost fifteen years younger than non-Hispanic whites. There is little question that this age distribution now works to Latinos’ disadvantage—the youth of the United States vote much less frequently than older cohorts. Young

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57Latino America

people are also less connected to their communities, more mobile, less likely to own property, and less likely to have children enrolled in schools. As a consequence, they pay less attention to politics than other Ameri- cans, and many issues of governance have lower salience for them. The pace of electoral growth will accelerate significantly, however, as young Latino citizens mature. History suggests that as they begin to raise chil- dren and buy homes, to work more and socialize less, they will devote increasing attention to politics and governance.

Age and nativity, of course, are just two of several key demographic characteristics that suppress Latino vote share. A third characteristic is so- cioeconomic status, by which we mean income and educational levels. As already mentioned, Latino income and education levels are significantly below the national norms. The influence of income and education should not be underestimated. Figure 4.2 illustrates statistical models of voter turnout from Shaun Bowler and Gary Segura, with and without con- trols for income and education.9 The darker bars indicate between-group comparisons of racial and ethnic minorities with non-Hispanic whites.

FIgUre 4.1 Median Age by Self-Reported Racial/ethnic Identity

The categories white, black, and Asian exclude those who identify as Hispanic. Data source: 2010 US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2010.

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African Americans appear to slightly underperform whites when it comes to voting (by 0.7%), while Asian Americans underperform more signifi- cantly, at around 14%. Latino citizens are about 13% less likely to vote than non-Hispanic whites.

The lighter bars reestimate those differences by removing the effects of income and education and comparing individuals of approximately the same income and education, letting only race vary. For African Americans, factoring out income and education differences makes an insignificant difference in their turnout compared to whites: their slight disadvantage turns into a 7% advantage. For Latinos, income and edu- cation account for nine points of their 13% disadvantage in relation to whites. In both instances, we can conclude that income and education are principal factors in reducing voter turnout for African Americans and Latino Americans. (The disadvantage in turnout reflected in Asian Amer- ican numbers is made worse when we account for income and education.)

FIgUre 4.2 Minority Turnout Probability Relative to Non-Hispanic Whites, Observed and estimated, Controlling for Other Factors

Source: Bowler and Segura (2011), 133. Data source: American National Election Study 2008.

-‐0.007

-‐0.132 -‐0.142

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Black Hispanic Asian

Baseline After other factors included

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In other words, while Latinos and especially African Americans overper- form electorally with respect to their socioeconomic status, Asians dra- matically underperform.

Finally, we need to examine mobilization. Do candidates and parties devote relatively less attention to encouraging Latinos to vote, and if so, is this another source of their systematic disadvantage at the polls?

It turns out that Latino citizens are far less likely than similarly situ- ated non-Hispanic whites and others to benefit from mobilization efforts by parties and candidates. Survey data on electoral participation and mobilization make it clear that Latino citizens are less likely to receive turnout messages and other mobilization messages from both parties and candidates. A great deal of the failure of Americans to participate in politics could be laid at the doorstep of the political parties, which have simply failed to try to mobilize voters.10 Campaign contact can increase turnout by several percentage points, especially if the contact is personal in some way.

Almost 47% of non-Hispanic white citizens surveyed in the 2008 American National Election Studies reported having been telephoned or visited by representatives from the parties. The comparable numbers are 38% for African Americans, 32.3% for Latinos, and 21.2% for Asian Americans (see Figure 4.3). This difference is statistically significant and obviously important. There was an almost fifteen-percentage-point gap in the likelihood that a Latino citizen would be contacted and urged to vote in 2008 compared to non-Hispanic whites.

s o c i A L A n d P s y c h oL o g i c A L mo T i vAT i o n An absence of resources can depress political participation, and this is a significant challenge for Latinos. Beyond the usual physical or financial resources, however, some political science research suggests that psycho- logical and social factors can be associated with turnout as well—such as a strong belief that participation is the “right” thing to do, or a sense of group loyalty that includes political action. As we suggested earlier, the electoral participation of Latinos and African Americans may be better than their material resources would suggest. Why would this be?

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In general, individuals’ psychological engagement in electoral politics reflects their socialization to the political system, the level of informa- tion they possess, the extent to which they are inculcated with norms of attention and involvement, and the degree to which their career, neigh- borhood, and social networks impinge on their political engagement. Res- idential segregation, like foreign birth, reduces opportunities for exposure to both the participatory habits of others and political information that would reduce the costs of participation and increase the perceived ben- efits. In short, resource deficits can reduce individuals’ psychological at- tachment to voting.

There are other social factors to consider as well, chief among them group identity. Michael Dawson’s pioneering work on the critical role of African American solidarity in mobilizing voter participation has since been extended to Latinos and Asian Americans. Identifying with a

FIgUre 4.3 Party Mobilization in the 2008 election

Respondents were asked this question: “As you know, the political parties try to talk to as many people as they can to get them to vote for their candidate. Did anyone from one of the POLITICAL PARTIES call you up or come around and talk to you about the campaign this year?” Source: Bowler and Segura (2011), 127. Data source: American National Election Study, 2008.

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group—as part of an individual’s identification with a community and how that community acts on its own behalf—can be sufficiently mobiliz- ing to motivate the individual to overcome resource deficits and external mobilization and turn out on behalf of the group.

Latino Decisions’ polling has repeatedly found evidence of this ef- fect of group identity. In our election eve polls, we have regularly asked Latino registered voters who report voting why they voted in a particu- lar election: did they vote to support the GOP candidate, to support the Democratic candidate, or to support the Latino community? Latinos have frequently identified community support as their reason for voting. In 2012 there were almost as many respondents who identified the Latino community as what brought them to the polls as respondents who identi- fied a desire to vote for a Democratic candidate. Republican candidates as turnout motivators lagged far behind.

One factor to consider that is more psychological than social is whether the citizen is sufficiently empowered to turn out. That is, does the individ- ual Latino citizen feel that turning out to vote will have any effect? Polit- ical scientists call this concept “efficacy,” and we generally break it down into two components: internal efficacy, or a citizen’s feeling that his or her vote has an impact on elections; and external efficacy, or the belief that the outcome of elections can actually change policy. A closely related concept

FIgUre 4.4 Self-Reported Motivation of Latinos Who Voted, 2012

Source: Latino Decisions, election eve poll, 2012.

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is “alienation”: a citizen’s feeling that her government does not work on behalf of individuals like her but rather serves the rich, or big business, or some group other than her own. Many citizens have low levels of ef- ficacy and higher levels of alienation; an individual’s belief that elections don’t matter—or that he or she doesn’t matter—clearly reduces political participation.

Though Latinos are overperforming at the polls for their age and so- cioeconomic status, leaving 11 million or more votes on the table is very detrimental to Latino political empowerment and, by extension, their quality of life. Even as activists and civic engagement organizations try to mobilize more Latinos to participate, register, and vote, a critical question remains: why do Latinos abstain from voting? Are they simply victims of age, lack of education, and low income, or do their attitudes about gov- ernment and politics partly explain their low turnout?

W h y s o me L AT i n o s d o n’ T v o T e In 2012 Latino Decisions conducted a landmark study of the undermo- bilized population of Latino citizens eligible to vote. We examined two distinct segments of nonvoting Latinos—those who were successfully reg- istered but failed to turn out, and those who had never registered at all.

We have good reason to believe that these two types of folks differ. Registration is a voluntary act in the United States, and those who choose to take the time to register are different from those who don’t. We think of registered voters as a “self-selected” subsample of the population. They are more interested in politics, they pay more attention to it, they see so- cial or civic value in fulfilling their roles as citizens, and they are generally more socially secure. By contrast, people who never register have usually passed up dozens of opportunities to do so—such as when they obtain a driver’s license, since most motor vehicle registries now make it easy to register to vote at the same time. Importantly, we should never view nonregistration as a failure to act. Since the advent of “motor-voter” and other regular and frequent opportunities afforded individuals to register to vote, it can no longer be said of most nonregistrants that they never

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encountered that opportunity. Rather, the nonregistrant is now someone who has repeatedly decided to decline the opportunity to register to vote.

So registered voters are different from the unregistered. But some reg- istered voters participate in elections more frequently than others. This, too, is curious, since nonvoting registered voters have already paid a modest cost to be eligible for the process. Why, after choosing to register, would a citizen subsequently choose not to actually vote?

Admittedly, there is lots of “noise” in the process—random circum- stances that can shape both the decision to register and the decision to vote. Some nonregistrants may be hoping to avoid jury duty, and some may not even realize they aren’t registered. Among those registering but not voting, work schedules, parenting crises, and even momentary dissat- isfaction with the choices in one or more elections might prevent them from voting. But noise notwithstanding, there is clearly a sizable segment of the Latino population (and other Americans as well, of course) who have repeatedly and consciously chosen not to register or, once registered, decided against voting.

Why?

W h AT n o n P A r T i c i P A n T s s Ay A B o u T e L e c T i o n s As mentioned earlier, Latino Decisions conducted six focus groups in Houston, Los Angeles, and Fresno to get some insight into nonparticipa- tion. Across the groups and voter types we found high levels of political alienation and low efficacy. Overall, respondents displayed low levels of internal and external political efficacy, and political trust was low.

When asked why they didn’t vote, participants in all groups expressed strong disillusionment with politicians, parties, lobbyists, and the system- atic failure of the political system to address issues that mattered to them. Rafael, from Houston, was not registered. When asked how he felt about politics, he had a quick answer. “Frustration . . . the people down here, nothing changes for them. If anything, it is getting worse.” David, also from Houston, expressed exceedingly low efficacy. Unlike Rafael, David had been turned off by his direct exposure to politics. “The way the system

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works, I don’t think our vote counts that much. . . . I got really turned off by a lot of things I saw when we were getting involved in the elections.”

There was general agreement that politicians and elected officials are primarily interested in their own political gain and have little regard for the concerns and problems that Americans face. Juanita, not currently registered, expressed the sentiment of powerlessness. “My mom always tried to push me to vote, but my vote is not going to make a difference,” she said. Rafael specifically cited the corrupting influence of money: “There’s too much money in politics.” He went on, “Do you think they [Congress] are going to pass a law saying you can’t do this [lobbying] any- more? Of course not!”

A second important factor surfaced: respondents had low levels of political information, which was not surprising since the resource of ed- ucation was in short supply among them. Typically, participants in the political system must have the opportunity, motivation, and ability to gather political information. Our respondents clearly had the opportunity (though some did mention being short on time) and ability to gather in- formation, but lacked the motivation to become politically knowledgeable.

Catalina, an unregistered respondent who lived in California, made it clear to us that she knew how and where to register but had chosen not to. “I’ve had the [registration] slip every time I go to the DMV to fill out right there, boom. I just don’t do it. Well, mostly because I don’t pay enough at- tention, and I don’t want to go in here with my eyes closed, filling in dots for people I don’t know anything about.” Alfredo, in the same focus group of unregistered citizens with Catalina, illustrated how information costs can keep people from being active:

If I’m going to vote, I want to make an informed decision when I vote. I want my vote to really count and be in my best interest. And that’s a lot of work to go there and get to the bottom of these issues, the can- didates, the initiatives, and um, I’m kind of lazy right now. I haven’t done that . . . it takes a lot of work, you can’t listen to the commercials.

A sense of powerlessness coupled with a lack of political knowledge leads many Latinos to feel that elected officials either don’t have the power

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to make a difference or do have the power but are controlled by more powerful external forces. Alfredo voiced his clear belief that government and politics worked to help others, not him. “The government is like, you know, other people that have more power, more money, and control ev- erything. . . . But I mean, elected officials are just puppets.”

Finally, the focus groups revealed some structural barriers that made it difficult to find polling places. Coupled with limited time and a lack of comprehensive, nonpartisan information, Latinos seemed to experience substantial impediments to voting. A strong class component came into play here as well—working people work fixed hours, and long lines can se- verely diminish their participation. Anita, a perky and talkative registered voter from Houston, explained the connection between costs and partici- pation: if online voting were available, she said, a person could vote “in the privacy of your own home, you could really take the time, there’s not long lines, it’s not late, you’re not tired from working all day. Yeah, take your time.”

f i n d i n g T h o s e m i s s i n g v o T e r s The willingness to vote clearly varied across the three voter types. We thought of a number of focus group members as “leaners”—that is, as people who were already inclined to vote (though not reliably so). Re- spondents in Los Angeles indicated that political messages from trusted sources could motivate them to participate in politics. The sociodemo- graphic profile of the Los Angeles sample suggested that this focus group was more informed about politics than the other groups. The members of this group were more partisan, and a clear connection between personal economic circumstances and elected officials and parties was suggested by their recall of “better times” under the Clinton administration. Candidate and partisan appeals were likely to resonate with this sample.

Registered Latino voters in Fresno were not as eager to participate in the 2012 election, though most of them could be classified as “persuad- able.” In both Los Angeles and Fresno, the unregistered we spoke to could best be classified “unreachable.” The majority of unregistered voters noted that they planned to “sit out” the election, by which they meant, not that

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they would ultimately refrain from voting, but that it would take extraor- dinary efforts to persuade them to vote. Interestingly, some appeared intrigued by the idea of a Latino running for a major political office. A personal or symbolic connection to a candidate or issue could draw these individuals into politics, but any heavy use of political content in a mobi- lization campaign could turn off this segment.

In Houston, participants in both focus groups expressed a strong will- ingness to vote, or to consider voting, if they had information about the candidates assuring them that the candidates had well-established records of delivering the outcomes that mattered most to them. Even Rafael, our skeptic, was willing to be persuaded if he could be assured that the quality of the candidates would be better. “If somebody came forward and had a good résumé and background, and showed that they had done some things, then maybe so.”

Moreover, the group solidarity among these Latino voters was clear, as was the emergence of a norm of participation. In fact, some of our registered voters who were not voting expressed considerable remorse, recognizing that in not voting they had violated community and family expectations. To Anita, the outspoken registered voter from Houston, not voting felt wrong: “We were out there working those campaigns. . . . I was eight or nine, and I was out there making T-shirts . . . putting up posters, we were very much involved. And that is why I think it’s real sad that I feel like it’s not worth it anymore. For me not to vote, it’s a real sad thing.” Anita’s sentiments suggest that this sort of voter could be recov- ered, drawn back into the political system, with the right mobilization and messenger.

By their own account, many of these citizens might have been drawn to the polls if they had personal connections to the electoral process—for ex- ample, if their friends and family members voted, or the candidates were coethnics, or they were personally familiar with the candidates. To moti- vate them, candidates and parties—and even voter mobilization groups— need to focus on rebuilding trust and repairing the relationship between these citizens and the system from which they feel so disconnected. But who are the trusted messengers who will do this work? We return to this question momentarily.

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W h AT m A k e s ( n o n ) v o T e r s ( n o T ) v o T e?

To examine these populations more systematically, Latino Decisions built on the findings from the six focus groups by conducting a survey of 1,045 Latinos eligible to vote but not engaged in the electorate. The total sample consisted of 443 respondents who were not registered to vote and another 602 respondents who were registered but not voting.

To evaluate respondents in terms of their propensity to vote, we cre- ated an index to account for attitudes about government and politics, civic engagement, information about the election, and prior history of participation. In combination, these factors told us whether people had many different attributes that primed them for more or less political engagement. Based on their responses to these items, we categorized respondents into one of three tiers: low, moderate, or high propensity to vote.

Responses to questions about the following subjects were included in this index:

1. How closely are you following the election? 2. Do you know the names of the candidates running for president? 3. Have you heard about or are you familiar with: Mi Familia Vota, Ya

Es Hora, NALEO, and NCLR? 4. What is your partisan identification? 5. Would you register if you received a registration card in the mail? 6. “When watching or listening to news, I feel frustrated or angry.”

(agree-disagree) 7. “I will try to register and vote in this election.” (agree-disagree) 8. Reasons for not voting in the 2008 election. 9. Reasons for not registering to vote.

We coded the responses and then used them to create an index that ranged from 0 to 23, with higher values indicating a greater likelihood of participating in politics. Using these scores, we broke all the respondents into three groups.11

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The next two figures illustrate these Latinos’ propensity to vote by a series of demographic traits. The moderate-propensity group was the largest for all age, gender, and language ability groups (Figure 4.5). Con- sistent with all other Americans, the oldest cohort of Latino voters had the largest share of high-probability voters, at 29%. By contrast, young Lati- nos—those ages eighteen to twenty-four—had the lowest share, only 17%, of high-propensity voters (and the next youngest group didn’t do much better). Figure 4.5 clearly illustrates the age resource disadvantage faced by Latinos. Latinos in California appeared to be somewhat less available for mobilization than Latinos nationwide, while there seem to have been similar distributions between men and women and between English and Spanish speakers. This last finding is something of a surprise, since Span- ish speakers have greater difficulty accessing political information and are almost certainly foreign-born.

FIgUre 4.5 Propensity of Latinos to Vote by Age, Sex, Language Ability, and California Residency

Source: Latino Decisions survey, 2013.

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Figure 4.6 shows the nativity, education, income, national origin, and voter registration status of low-, moderate-, and high-propensity voters. Obviously, greater rates of high- and moderate-propensity to vote would be found among registered voters than among those who were no longer registered. Though these nonparticipants had fallen out of the electorate in recent elections, they had paid the costs of registration at some point in their political lives and were more interested in politics than those who had never registered. As we’d expect, more Latinos with higher income and education were in the higher-propensity group. Lower educational attainment is associated with a lower propensity to vote.

Somewhat surprisingly, foreign-born Latinos were more likely to be in the moderate- and high-propensity group relative to their US-born

FIGURe 4.6 Propensity of Latinos to Vote, by Registration Status and Demographic Traits

Source: Latino Decisions survey, 2013.

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tabLe 4.1 Percentage of Low-, Moderate-, and High-Propensity Latino Voters to Describe Messages as “Really Convincing”

Message Tested Overall Low Medium High

45% 32% 45% 61%

42 32 39 64

42 34 37 62

41 28 43 50

40 29 41 48

31 20 33 37

29 19 28 45

20 18 19 28

1. If you don’t register to vote and take part in democracy, nothing will ever change. The only way we can change our commu- nities for the better and move our country forward is to register and vote.

2. Even today, some law enforcement of- ficials are harassing and racially profiling Latinos. We must register to vote to put an end to discrimination against Latinos.

3. You can make a difference. Make your voice heard in our democracy. We need to register today and vote tomorrow.

4. Many states are considering passing laws that discriminate against Latinos, like SB 1070 in Arizona. Only by registering to vote can we change these laws.

5. From Mexico to the Middle East, across the world, thousands of people risk their lives to vote and be heard. We can’t take it for granted. It’s time we register and vote.

6. Special interests with lots of money like it when fewer people vote because it’s eas- ier for them to influence the actions made by elected officials. The only way to change things is to register to vote.

7. Every year critical elections are decided by less than a couple hundred voters. If just a few more people were registered and voted, the entire election outcome could have changed.

8. Elected officials determine a lot of what happens for immigration, education, jobs, and the economy. When you register to vote, elected officials listen to you.

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71Latino America

counterparts. This trend echoes the recent political science research, which finds, first, that naturalized voters in recent years have been more active than naturalized voters in the past, and second, that more time in the United States is associated with declines in Latino efficacy.

P e r s u A s i v e me s s A g e s T o g e T L AT i n o s o n T o T he r oL L s In our study, we ran a messaging experiment to see which attempt at per- suading respondents to vote would be found to be most persuasive. Recall that we were studying the nonparticipating, so our goal was to identify the messages that had the greatest impact.

Table 4.1 reports the messages we tested and the corresponding share of respondents who described each of them as “really convincing.” What messages appear to work? The results differ considerably across the three propensity groups we created with our index (low, moderate, high). The difference between the high-propensity group and the others is striking. The majority of the high-propensity group found half of the prompts to be very convincing. Appeals to democracy (messages 1 and 3) and fight- ing anti-Latino policy (messages 2 and 4) were very powerful motivators for this group. The moderate-propensity group showed some similar trends: their top two messages were also about democracy (message 1) and Latino- targeting policies (message 4).

Curiously, the last message did not resonate much with any segment, more or less validating the expressions of alienation and low efficacy from Rafael, Anita, and others in our focus groups. Few Latino respondents who avoid electoral participation really believe that voting can get the attention of elected officials. With alienation high and efficacy low, that message fails to persuade.

me s s e n g e r s m AT T e r We have spent much of the last several years trying to educate clients and leaders alike on the importance of the messenger. As advertising agen- cies have long understood, what you are trying to sell determines, in large measure, who is going to be good at selling it: the messenger has to be

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72 Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura

credible and influential and must be someone the target both trusts and sees as worthy of emulation. Civic engagement messages are no different.

Figure 4.7 illustrates the impact that different endorsers would have on the decision of current nonvoters to register or vote. All of the groups agreed that coethnic firefighters, police, doctors, nurses, and teachers as messengers would have a significant influence on them. These community notables, whose leadership is earned through social position and other ave- nues of trust, consistently demonstrated the greatest persuasive authority in getting nonparticipant Latinos to consider registering and voting. Well over half of low-, moderate-, and high-propensity voters agreed that these Latino endorsers would have a positive impact on their political participation.

By contrast, entertainment figures (actors, athletes, celebrities) did not have much influence, though Univision anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas remained trusted figures for high- and moderate-propensity groups. Even Piolin, the syndicated radio personality often credited as one of the significant influences on the massive mobilizations during the 2006 immigration marches, does poorly when compared to nurses, teachers,

FIgUre 4.7 The Impact of Latino Messengers on Nonvoters— endorsers Who Would Make Them More Likely to Register and to Vote

Source: Latino Decisions survey, 2013.

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73Latino America

and firefighters. To be clear, this does not mean that these individuals have a negative effect; we have no evidence that they drive people away from the voting booth. Moreover, different people respond to different messages, and mobilization of this hard-to-reach electorate may require a variety of players and pitches. We do, however, clearly find that famous people are less important than trusted community members when mobilizing people to vote. Of course, other factors beyond the boundaries of the Latino com- munity might also have an effect. Figure 4.8 highlights the influence of cer- tain non-Latino individuals on political participation. Family and friends have a consistently strong positive impact for all groups: if asked by a close family member or friend to vote, two-thirds or more said that they would do so, and this finding is consistent with all we know about Latino familial closeness and the importance of family information networks.

Unions are powerful endorsers for high-propensity nonvoters, but not so much for low- and moderate-propensity groups. Organized labor is consis- tently one of the strongest advocates for Latino civic engagement and immi- gration reform. This support derives from the fact that the labor movement comprises a growing share of Latinos, a natural consequence of the move- ment of Latinos into the building trades and the movement of unions into the service sector of the economy. The influence of unions as messengers was greatest among those nonvoters we found to be more readily persuadable.

It is striking, and entirely contrary to popular narrative about Latinos, that priests and ministers rated lowest for moderate- and high-propensity groups. The most informed and engaged nonvoters were less likely to be influenced by the endorsements of religious leaders. This powerful piece of information echoes the earlier observation that Latinos, no matter how religiously observant they are, do not look to their religious leaders for political guidance.

Finally, Figure 4.9 reports the effect of specific family endorsements on voting decisions. The results are essentially what we might expect: mothers, fathers, and spouses or partners had the most positive influ- ence relative to all other family members. It is quite noticeable that the low-propensity voters seemed to be much less moved by family opinions, which were so potent for others in the survey.

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74 Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura

W h AT h Av e W e L e A r n e d A B o u T T he m i s s i n g L AT i n o v o T e r s?

Eleven million uncast ballots is a huge wasted resource that Latinos can ill afford. Improving voter registration and turnout is the sine qua non of increasing Latino electoral clout.

Some Latino resource disadvantages (age, specifically) will diminish over time, and there are also considerable attitudinal advantages that will keep Latino turnout within striking distance of the goal of parity. The most salient of these advantages is group identity: it is clear that iden- tity concerns drive turnout decisions for as many as one in three Latino voters.

The Latino share of the electorate, though still low, has approximately tripled in the last generation, and it grows with each passing election. Latinos have begun to play a pivotal role in national politics and national elections. We turn next to exactly how, and with what effect, they are tak- ing on this role.

FIgUre 4.8 The Impact of Non-Latino Messengers on Nonvoters: endorsers Who Would Make Them More Likely to Register and to Vote

Source: Latino Decisions survey, 2013.

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FIgUre 4.9 The Impact of Family Messengers on Nonvoters: endorsers Who Would Make Them More Likely to Register and to Vote

Source: Latino Decisions survey, 2013.

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