Nuestro PAC, the largest Latino-centered and partisan Super PAC in the nation, held a press conference today in review of the 2020 Latino vote. Here’s what the research says Democrats need to do in order to be successful next election.
Founder and president Chuck Rocha emphasized that while research conducted by other groups on the Latino vote is important, Nuestro PAC’s research is “different”. The Super PAC conducted approximately 9,000 interviews with a wide range of sources including campaign staff on the ground, non-profits, and candidate consultants in places like Texas and Florida in order to gain a comprehensive perspective on what happened during the 2020 elections with Latino voters.
Money spent by Democrats in targeting Latino voters through television ads in June and July was incomparable to the amount pressed into the last 30 days of the 2020 election. Chuck Rocha says, “we also know now that there was a lot of money wasted because it was too little and too late.” He went on to say, “spending resources is important for the Latino community, but [only] if you do it early enough to actually have an impact.”
Nuestro PAC’s main focus in analyzing voters is democratic and non-partisan or “middle of the road” voters, with the potential to be swayed. Even among these voters, the Super PAC emphasized the importance of not viewing Latinos as monolithic. For example, the GOP successfully appealed to many working-class Latinos as they promoted opening up businesses during the coronavirus shut downs in order to put people back to work. Additionally, misinformation surrounding the democrats being tied to socialism also caused some damage. Rocha emphasized that though these instances hurt the democrats, they were not a cause for losing and underperforming in a place like Miami.
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Rocha says there must be a commitment of money and resources early into a state. In his presentation, he points out that much of the money spent on Spanish television is centered in the month prior to election day. This did not prove to be effective as it missed early voters and came at a time where many have already made up their mind on who they are voting for.
The founder and president highlighted the need for “validators” like Nuestro PAC and other culturally competent groups to promote democractic candidates through advertising. Groups that are Latino-centered such as Nuestro PAC already have a built trust with Latino voters, so validation is key in order to sway them into voting for the democratic candidate.
Chuck Rocha emphasized the importance of long-standing and on-the-ground community organizations such as LUCHA and Mi Familia Vota, that do year-long work even outside of political races. These organizations were particularly key in Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona.
Though Biden was successful in many of the districts that were projected to be democrat, in Miami Dade county he won but underperformed Hillary Clinton by 20%-28%. Nuestro PAC presented a lesson learned for Democrats from the 2020 election: prioritize the Latino vote early and strongly rather than rush money towards the end of the election.