Hispanic millennials are three times less likely to vote than the average American – but a vast push aims for change. Still, many are unimpressed with their options

Every 30 seconds, a Latino in the US turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote. In November, this growing slice of the Hispanic electorate will make up close to half of the record 27.3 million Latinos who can cast ballots this election.

For a political party peering at its future, it would seem there is no more coveted group than young Latinos. Yet Hispanic millennials are three times less likely to turn out in a presidential election than the average American. And less than half of Latinos under 40 say they’ve been reached by a political party, campaign or organization this cycle.

Less than half of Latinos under 40 say they’ve been reached by a political party, campaign or organization this cycle

A vast effort is under way to change that. On college campuses and outside soccer stadiums, at grocery stores, public libraries and even taco trucks, volunteers are signing up Latinos to vote. And everyone invested in this effort, from the Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s campaign to nonpartisan Latino advocacy organizations, are using Donald Trump’s rhetoric – his repeated attacks on immigrants and hardline immigration policies – to galvanize this key constituency.

This November, William Joel Bravo will be one of the youngest voters, his 18th birthday falling five days before election day. The Ecuador-born student has followed the campaign closely to help him decide who to support. He says Clinton is a clear leader when it comes to chasing Florida’s Latino vote, particularly over the issue of immigration.



“On Hispanic television there, you don’t see much Trump. It’s Hillary who is targeting the minority voters,” said Bravo, who immigrated to New York 12 years ago with his parents. “Trump is lacking in that. You can see that in the low numbers of people of color who support him.

“There are clips of Hillary speaking in her rallies, with music in background, to engage the everyday voter. My mom watches these ads and calls me up and says, “Oh, Hillary has done this and this, Hillary is great.’ [But] there’s not much from Trump.”

Bravo, who said he developed a passion for politics in high school and has served an internship in the New York state assembly, will support the Democrats, but added: “If anything, I’m more anti-Trump than I am pro-Hillary.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘On Hispanic television there, you don’t see much Trump. It’s Hillary who is targeting the minority voters.’ Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Though Clinton maintains a strong lead over Trump among Hispanic voters of all ages, some Latino leaders worry that sounding the alarm on the Republican nominee is not a strong enough message to turn the growing Hispanic population into an electoral force. In a recent Latino Decisions poll, respondents were asked why they rated the 2016 presidential election as more important than the 2012 vote. Nearly one-quarter said it was to support Clinton while more than 50% said it was to stop Trump.

If anything, I’m more anti-Trump than I am pro-Hillary William Bravo

“It may be clear what people are running from, but you also have to give them a place of promise and prosperity to run to,” said Clarissa Martínez de Castro, deputy vice-president of the National Council of La Raza. “You have to communicate that message very clearly and often.”

The woman in charge of broadcasting Hillary Clinton’s message to Latino millennials is Lorella Praeli, a former Dreamer who became a naturalized citizen last year. Praeli, originally from Peru, came to the US with her family when she was 10. She lived for almost 13 years without legal status and became a leading activist for the nation’s immigrant youth population.

From the outset, Praeli said, the campaign’s strategy for engaging Latino millennials has been to “meet them where they are” – online and on the ground.

In addition to door-knocking and pavement-pounding in states such as Colorado and Nevada, staff and volunteers are holding salsa classes and Get Out the Tacos and Vote drives, in response to a comment by one of Trump’s Latino advisers, who warned that if the nominee lost, there would be taco trucks on every corner.

Last week, the campaign announced that it had reserved $30m to spend on digital advertising with the specific goal of reaching Latino and African American millennials in the final sprint toward election day. The digital spots will appear on YouTube, Facebook, Univision and Telemundo, among other networks.

Young Hispanic voters are increasingly independent, proudly bicultural and, anecdotally, in favor of dispensing with the phrase “sleeping giant”. They are more likely than their parents to be English-dominant and US-born. They are plugged into the political conversation online and across social media platforms and yet are three times less likely to vote in a presidential election than the average voter.

Praeli said her team took all of this into consideration when developing their strategy to draw Hispanics toward Clinton. The communications and messaging shift between English, Spanish and Spanglish and address the priorities and concerns of a particular group, whether it’s “fifth-generation Mexican Americans in Colorado” or “traditionally conservative Cuban Americans in Florida”.

“We are comfortable taking risks,” Praeli said. “The thing about operating in this new digital space, everyone isn’t going to love what you try. We’re going to have fun, we’re going to be edgy … We have a team that is bold and visionary.”

By contrast, Donald Trump has no team devoted to boosting Latino turnout. He likes to say “the Hispanics love me”, but polls consistently show that they do not.



With fewer than 50 days to go before the election, nearly 80% of Latinos view Trump negatively and fewer than one in five plan to vote for him, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll.

Marissa Desilets, 22, of Palm Springs, California, is among the small but vocal coalition of Hispanic voters who support Trump this election. Desilets, a third-generation Mexican American who interned for Trump LA, said the nominee had missed an obvious opportunity to connect with young Latinos of all backgrounds.

“It would be amazing to have Melania to reach out,” Desilets said. “It connected with me when she spoke at the [Republican national convention] about her immigration experience and her belief in the American dream. I wish we would have seen more of her on the campaign trail and telling her story.”

Whether Trump has irreparably damaged the GOP’s attempts to reach a new generation of Latinos remains a lively debate within the party. Helen Aguirre Ferré, the newly installed director of Hispanic communications for the Republican National Committee, insists he has not.

It would be amazing to have Melania to reach out. I wish we would have seen more of her on the campaign trail Marissa Desilets

This year, Republicans launched a social media campaign with a series of issues videos that aim to connect with digitally savvy young Latinos. The party also began a leadership initiative in battleground states, which promises to equip the next generation of Latino leaders.

“The big challenge is to make sure voters are engaged,” she said. “It’s always been the challenge and there’s nothing different about that time.”

Aguirre Ferré said Latinos and the Republican party generally shared the same family values, but acknowledged that the team had work to do to get that message out. She pointed to Hispanic evangelicals and Cuban Americans as evidence of two reliably conservative Latino constituencies. Beyond that, she believes Trump’s message will resonate with disillusioned young supporters who think the political system is rigged by elite Washington insiders.

Maria Alcivar, a graduate student at Iowa State University, is one of those voters. But she won’t be voting for Trump.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A person holds a sign reading ‘Latinos for Trump’ on the third day of the Republican national convention. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

“Latinos don’t have an option,” said Alcivar, a former Dreamer from Ecuador who became a naturalized citizen last year. “We have to vote for Hillary Clinton. It’s her or nobody. I can’t waste my vote because a Trump presidency would be too harmful to my family and to my community.”

In previous elections, the backing of Miami’s Cuban Americans has provided a bedrock for Republican candidates, but that support has eroded in recent years as more of the older, hardline generation dies off and a more liberal generation of millennials comes of voting age.

Why millennials' age demographic is not the defining trait for how they'll vote Read more

As a first-generation Cuban American living in Miami, Jonathan Ortega, 20, is the perfect example of a new wave of young Hispanic Florida voters turning away from the Republican leanings of their immigrant parents.

“People are scared of Trump and so am I,” said Ortega, who was born in Miami to Cuban exiles and is majoring in international business and law at Florida International University.

“He has crazy ideas. There’s too many people that just don’t care what Donald Trump does. Whatever he does, they’re OK with it.”

Ortega says he is also unimpressed with the conduct of either candidate through the campaign. “Both have comported themselves in poor manners and could have handled certain situations a lot better, including Hillary, but Trump has made so many more mistakes and hasn’t even attempted to correct them. I’ve never seen candidates that much hated,” he said.