You’re only reaching a fraction of U.S. Hispanic voters, the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the U.S. electorate.
Political advertisers have been wasting their budgets on ineffective, inaccurate audience targeting and missing out on millions of votes because they don't know how to reach Hispanic voters.
But how can you reach Hispanic voters efficiently and effectively when they are consistently underrepresented or misrepresented in traditional media planning and measurement tools? There’s a chasm between what you know about Hispanic voters and what you need to know to reach them.
It’s time to close that gap.
In partnership with TelevisaUnivision, we introduce a new suite of free audiences and insights to the Tunnl platform: VAMOS, the premier audience intelligence solution for reaching Hispanic adults with issue-based campaigns spanning advocacy, public affairs, purpose-driven marketing, and, as we'll discuss in this article, politics.
Political advertisers need to change the way they reach Hispanic voters, a traditionally underserved but critical portion of the electorate. VAMOS users will be the ones who do it.
Introducing VAMOS, an Issue-Based Audience Intelligence Platform for Hispanic Voters
VAMOS is your one-stop hub for accurate, issue-based Hispanic audience intelligence. It includes insights into audience demographics and media consumption behaviors delivered via interactive dashboards, plus tools for analysis, planning, optimization, and campaign measurement - all accessible for free. 
In VAMOS, you’ll find more than 20 prebuilt Hispanic audiences based on the top issues that are mobilizing Hispanic voters this election cycle, including student loan cancellation, border security, climate change, inflation, abortion, taxes, and gun control.
"U.S. Hispanics have historically been underrepresented in traditional measurement solutions,” says Sara Fagen, Tunnl’s Co-Founder and CEO. “The marriage of highly accurate audience data with local measurement now unlocks the potential to get more information in the hands of Hispanic voters and will encourage participation in the democratic process."
Buy against your audience data from VAMOS in your digital and linear TV platforms for seamless cross-screen buys with:
- Audience Activation, an integrated feature to push your VAMOS data to your digital platforms
- TelevisaUnivision rate card matching for consistently advertising against VAMOS data on linear TV
Beyond planning your media buys, VAMOS enables continuous optimization over time for reliably high ROI and maximum impact. Never find out that your Hispanic audience has had a change of heart or changed where they consume media when it’s too late to take action. The data behind all VAMOS audiences and tools is always up-to-date, enabling constant, data-driven campaign optimization.
Reaching the U.S. Hispanics who are relevant to your campaigns used to require expert-level guesswork, erroneous ad spend, and a huge dose of luck; it used to be next to impossible. VAMOS reinvents Hispanic audience intelligence for political advertisers, and redefines the power of the Hispanic vote.
VAMOS is live now. Log in or sign up for your free VAMOS account in Tunnl's platform to get started today.
But why now? Let’s dig into what’s at stake for political advertisers as they coordinate their Hispanic voter outreach, including what barriers have prevented them from reaching Hispanic audiences effectively in the past.
Table of Contents
I. Introducing VAMOS, an Issue-Based Audience Intelligence Platform for Hispanic Voters
II. How Many Hispanic Voters Are There in the U.S.?
III. What Do Hispanic Voters Care About?
IV. How Political Advertisers are Failing Hispanic Voters
V. What You Can Do to Bridge the Gap and Reach Hispanic Voters Effectively
VI. What Do Political Advertisers Need to Engage Hispanic Voters?
How Many Hispanic Voters Are There in the U.S.?
Hispanic voters helped secure narrow seats for Democrats during the 2022 midterm elections and proved to be instrumental for former president Donald Trump in his first bid for office.
And their numbers are growing, fast.
Pew Research reveals that “Latinos are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the U.S. electorate since the last midterm elections” with an estimated 34.5 million U.S. Hispanics being eligible to vote this year.
"The Hispanic population is one of the most important voting blocs in America,” says Tunnl’s Co-Founder and CEO, Sara Fagen. “Hispanic voters have historically been underrepresented in traditional measurement solutions, and the inability to get messaging to an underrepresented population typically means that they participate in the democratic process at a lower level than they could."
It’s likely that more Hispanic voters would make it to the polls if political advertisers made a successful effort to reach them authentically. But only 48% of Latinos feel like their values are reflected or shared by the majority of Americans in 2023, a 20-point drop from 68% in 2018.
Political advertisers are failing to see, acknowledge, and activate Hispanic voters on the issues they care about, leaving millions of eligible voters alienated and uncertain about who has their interests in mind.
So, what issues are inspiring U.S. Hispanics to vote, and how can you earn their trust before election day?
What Do Hispanic Voters Care About?
While the economy has consistently been a top voting issue for Hispanic voters as recently as the 2022 midterm elections and was a deciding factor in the 2020 presidential race, other issues in addition to the economy will drive U.S. Hispanics to the polls in 2024, including climate change, healthcare, crime, education, abortion, and gun policy. The world has changed since our last election, and some Hispanics’ priorities are changing to match.
“Hispanic issues are America’s top issues," says Michele Day SVP, Political, Advocacy, and Government Group at TelevisaUnivision. "What brings Hispanic voters to the polls aligns with what's concerning the general electorate, but Hispanic voters are disproportionately left out of the conversation on both national and local issues."
But that doesn’t mean you should blast your climate change and abortion campaigns to all Hispanic voters across the nation, hoping to move the needle ahead of the election. Every demographic group—Hispanic voters included—is comprised of infinitely diverse people whose values, priorities, and sentiments span a nuanced gamut.
Consider this scenario:
Latino Republicans and Republican-leaning independents differ substantially from other Republicans on guns and immigration. The issues that are top-of-mind for East Coast Democrats may differ from their California counterparts, even if both are submitting blue ballots. The media consumption habits of Republicans with six-figure salaries could look very different from those of blue-collar Conservatives.
Keep looking closer at demographics like education or sex, and you’ll discover still more variation among seemingly similar groups.
Assumptions and stereotypes are behind many a failed and tarnished political campaign, and avoiding them is the key to political campaign success. As an advertiser campaigning to Hispanic voters, you need to know more than ethnicity - more than generalizations - to make a real impact with the right people. Demographics alone cannot tell you who cares about your issue, cause, or campaign; You need to target specific groups of voters based on the issues they prioritize to drive genuine impact at the polls.
But that’s just one remedy in the overall treatment plan political advertisers need to adopt if they want to cure the decades-long disease stifling their Hispanic voter outreach.
How Political Advertisers are Failing Hispanic Voters
The foremost mistake of political advertisers when it comes to targeting U.S. Hispanics is underestimating the power they have at the polls. Not only do Hispanic voters represent a large percentage of the electorate, but they are a persuadable group that’s receptive to your political message.
When Tunnl recently polled U.S. Hispanics on top societal and government issues and their voting habits, 58% agreed that, while they typically vote for candidates of one political party, they would consider voting differently, if the other party’s candidates made an effort to reach out to them.
And that outreach needs to start early in the election cycle.
“Political advertisers need to reach Hispanic voters early and often," says Michele Day SVP, Political, Advocacy, and Government Group at TelevisaUnivision. “Education on your issue or campaign takes the longest, don’t skip to turnout messaging. Engage with Hispanic voters early and regularly in-language to build trust. Trust is at the core of who they will vote for and trust takes time to build. U.S. Hispanics won’t vote for candidates they don’t know or issues they don’t understand.”
But instead of prioritizing this influential group, Hispanic voters are often an afterthought for campaign teams competing to secure other demographics.
“There is a significant piece of the overall voting population that is getting saturated with messaging,” says Tunnl’s Co-Founder and CEO, Sara Fagen. “And some of those dollars being reallocated to Hispanic media and reaching U.S. Hispanics means that a campaign will see higher reach, better reach, and a more balanced frequency in their overall messaging."
In large part, the failures of Hispanic voter outreach can be traced back to poor data. Underrepresentation and incomplete audience data on the voting habits, viewership behaviors, and sentiments of Hispanic voters leave political advertisers with few viable options for reaching their Hispanic constituents effectively and efficiently.
And where there’s an absence of reliable data, there’s an abundance of assumptions.
What You Can Do to Bridge the Gap and Reach Hispanic Voters Effectively
Hispanic voters won’t feel supported or understood by messages that do not resonate with their values. Miss the mark by reaching the wrong people, and you’ve not only wasted your budget and likely lost the viewer’s attention, but you’ve also tarnished their trust in your campaign; it’s unlikely those voters will show up for you on election day.
Understanding who cares about the issues you campaign on and where you target those messages are only two pieces of the data-driven, trust-building trifecta; language is the third.
“Research has shown that Spanish Language messaging delivers far greater engagement among Hispanic voters,” says Kathy Whitlock, Vice President of Strategy and Insights at TelevisaUnivision. “Communicating in Spanish with messages developed for this audience - whether a nuanced adaptation of English copy or original work - tells Hispanic voters that you understand who they are, what they need, and what they care about. The majority of Hispanic voters believe political parties and candidates who advertise in Spanish are showing them they want their vote.”
Without accurate data on the media consumption behaviors in households where Spanish is the primary language, political advertisers cannot confidently reach their Hispanic audience how they want to be reached - or how it’s most efficient to reach them.
The issues with the traditional approach to Hispanic voter outreach aren’t because of a lack of trying. Tools that make it easy to understand, reach, and connect with Hispanic audiences haven't been available, forcing you to work harder to achieve even a portion of your desired results.
Those limitations persist - but not for long.
What Do Political Advertisers Need to Engage Hispanic Voters?
Despite the complex issues that have traditionally prevented political advertisers from reaching Hispanic audiences, there is a solution.
And the solution is accurate data.
Reliable Hispanic audience data will make it clear which issues your target audience cares about, including all the nuanced sentiments that sweeping surveys and generalized polls leave out. It will also tell you how your audience wants to be reached, whether that’s in Spanish or English, on TV or digital media, etc.
Accurate audience data paves the path to voter trust, and voter trust wins elections.
VAMOS enables you to action on this information now, fast, with an election looming and opinions already forming on the issues that will determine who takes the highest office.
Log in or sign up for your free Tunnl account to reinvent your Hispanic audience intelligence with VAMOS.