Arnold Habla Español?: Language and Endorsement Effects in Campaigning for Latino Votes.

Abstract: Despite limited experience courting the Latino community, both political partiesmade a point to campaign aggressively for Latino "swing" votes through advertisements andget-out-the-vote (GOTV) drives in 2006. While there is a new commitment to Spanishlanguageadvertising and direct contact with Latino voters, no evidence exists that thistargeted outreach has worked. The question remains, does targeted advertising influence thevote choice of Latinos, and, how does this advertising affect the more general population?To address these questions, we implemented an experiment during the 2006 Californiaelection. Latino and non-Latino subjects were randomly assigned to a control or treatmentgroup. Those in the treated groups received a flyer endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger forgovernor, containing an endorsement from a Latino or an Anglo political figure. Thetreatment ads were further divided into English only or in both English/Spanish. Thus, thegroups were as follows: Anglo endorser English, Latino endorser English, Anglo endorserbilingual, and Latino endorser bilingual. We expect to find that targeted messages shouldhave a stronger influence on vote preference than non-targeted messages among Latinos.Further, the combined effect of a Latino endorser with a message delivered in bothlanguages might have the strongest effects. Finally, non-Latinos should be less receptive tothe Latino-targeted ads, perhaps witnessing a demobilizing effect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]