Spanish-Language Television Campaigns Encourage Hispanics to Vote

This week Telemundo aired segments of its “Tu Voto, Tu Futuro” (Your Vote, Your Future) campaign, and Univision recently started a similar campaign in conjunction with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

U.S. immigration law continues to be one of the most important issues for Hispanic voters, who could play a decisive role in several midterm elections. For instance, there are competitive races in Arizona, California, Texas and Florida, all of which possess significant Hispanic populations.

Despite the perception that these television campaigns are partisan, both networks have emphasized that their goal is to provide an education role in order to encourage civic participation. In the last midterm election (2006), approximately 60% of registered Hispanic voters actually cast a ballot, while roughly 71.5% of all other voters made it to the polls.