Latinx community members donated masks and encouraged farmworkers to vote in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley.
In 2020, the world witnessed the United States navigate a presidential election amid growing tensions over white supremacy, structural racism, misinformation, and elected officials deliberately exacerbating ugly social divisions. At the same time, the raging COVID-19 virus revealed gross government negligence—shaped in part by institutional racism—in protecting and supporting disproportionately affected communities from the pandemic’s physical and economic impacts. Election Day saw the highest voter turnout rates since 1900, but the results highlighted the country’s deep-seated social and political divides. There was strong representation in support of both sides of the ballot, and most Americans voted strictly along party lines.
Today, the question is: How can we build a democracy that truly reflects and serves all Americans? First, we must not be afraid to name the failed systems of power that led to social division and inequity in the first place. Then we must begin to replace those systems with new ones that support a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy. Funders, nonprofits, and grassroots organizers all have important roles to play in achieving this goal, and each must look both inward and outward to determine how to take effective action.
In our work at Hispanics in Philanthropy, a Latinx-led and Latinx-serving philanthropic organization, we have confronted the impacts of white supremacy, anti-immigrant rhetoric, COVID-19, and a divisive election and census year at both the personal and professional levels. Looking inward, we shifted internal structures and policies to reduce the personal stress staff members were experiencing, including increasing digital security, allowing for flexible work time and lenient caretaker leave, and carving out space to close the office for a few weeks throughout the year. We also looked at our approach to social change. Though painful and complicated, we worked to address blind spots in our transnational work, and understand how white supremacy showed up in our work and communities—in unrealistic work plans, for example, as well as in urgency of work, perfectionism, and colorism. This reaffirmed our commitment to centering racial equity across all our programs and resulted in our most flexible grants to date. A less-complicated grant process allowed our partners to shift their focus from election work to meet the demands of quarantined, low-income, migrant, and Latinx communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
We also looked at what we could learn about the Latinx electorate—including what motivated them to vote, or not—and how we could both create more meaningful connections with Latinx community members and help move the country toward a more inclusive democracy. Here are five of our biggest takeaways:
1. The Latinx Vote Is Growing
In 2020, Latinx voters became the nation’s largest nonwhite voting bloc, representing 13.3 percent of all eligible voters (or 32 million eligible voters). Across party lines, they turned out to vote in record numbers on Election Day, with more than 15 million Latinxs casting ballots and, according to NALEO Education Fund, more than 8 million voting early, compared to 3.7 million in 2016.
Micro-targeted political ads no doubt contributed to this high level of turnout. In many cases, ad strategies crafted to persuade Latinxs to vote or swing to one end of the political spectrum were careful to adjust their tone, message, and sentiment, and even their messenger to reach different segments of the Latinx community. For example, members of the band Los Tigres del Norte and other Latinx artists featured in micro-targeted ads for Mexican-American residents of Georgia, persuading them to vote in the runoff election. And the advocacy organization Poder Latinx made 400,000 phone calls and knocked on at least 15,000 doors after the November elections to raise funds, part of which paid for a targeted Univision ad that ran a week before the runoffs.
The success of these messages gives us a glimpse of what is possible when campaigns and grassroots organizations take the same amount of interest in and invest in Latinx voters as much as they do in white voters. In the future, all campaigns should understand that Latinxs are multi-issue and multi-generational, and shape their messages for Latinx communities on a local level rather than creating impersonal, catch-all, political ads.
This is also important given that the number of eligible Latinx voters stands to increase significantly over the next two decades. In her book, Finding Latinx, Paola Ramos notes, “Latinos are the youngest demographic in the country ... and every single year, one million Latinos turn eighteen years old.” Indeed, Pew Research Center reports that Latinxs “accounted for 39 percent of the overall increase of the nation’s eligible voting population.”
All told, Latinxs, combined with other nonwhite voters, are becoming a powerful force to expand the electorate, and will continue to challenge and shape the political landscape. Like electoral campaign teams, grassroots groups must adapt and diversify their engagement and communications strategies accordingly. A great example of effective grassroots youth engagement is in Wisconsin, where the youth-led nonprofit Leaders Igniting Transformation created a summer institute, dubbed Black Hogwarts, that trains young people of color to become advocates for their communities. Also in Wisconsin, the nonprofit Voces de la Frontera created a Latina, migrant-led advocacy program called Voceras to mobilize and educate farmworkers to vote. Funders must support efforts like these, including digital initiatives that engage young people of color.
2. Ongoing Civic Engagement Is Key
Political candidates’ tone-deaf way of courting Latinx voters every four years is no longer enough. Indeed, traditional engagement strategies that occasionally "parachute in" people and ideas without involving the community represent political gentrification. Meanwhile, despite more than 60 million Latinxs residing in the United States, Latinxs hold only 1 percent of all local and federal elected positions. Funders and advocacy organizations must commit to long-term investments in civic engagement and leadership to efficiently engage this diverse voting bloc, and ensure that federal, state, and local resources are fairly allocated.
Take the Latino Community Fund Georgia (LCF), which serves a young immigrant community and began connecting local groups in cities across Georgia by issue long before the 2020 election season. Since 2018, LCF has worked to educate Georgian communities on the links between social issues, such as the connection between quality health care access and participation in the US Census, and has found that Latinx Georgians perceive this longer-term outreach as less partisan than outreach for a general election. Executive Director Gigi Pedraza explained the organization’s approach to us this way: “What we want to build is a community that is engaged not because there’s an upcoming election, but because they understand the connections between policies and their daily lives. This has been the model that has worked for Black communities for decades. From the history of the Black Panthers and countless community organizers to the civil rights movement to the way Black churches understand and use their power to create opportunities for their communities.”
Latinx voters in Georgia demonstrate early voting pride for the Senate runoff race, just before the December 2020 holiday season.
The efforts of organizations like Latino Community Fund Georgia and Mi Familia Vota, which reached 1.4 million voters in Georgia, show that the path to increasing voter participation across Latinx communities starts with creating continuous, person-to-person engagement. Consistent investments of time and resources in neighborhoods, kitchens, and faith and community centers can help boost ongoing engagement by meeting communities where they are.
3. Authenticity Can Overcome Fear and Misinformation
Political campaigns to engage Latinx voters in battleground states have historically attempted to tap into cultural and social values, often in a way that leads people into political movements counter to their interests. Indeed, many campaigns are designed to spread fear and misinformation. To build Latinx political power and credibility, political parties, funders, and advocacy organizations must listen to Black and Brown, working-class families who intimately understand advocacy needs and how to engage their communities authentically.
In Texas, the grassroots social justice organization La Union Del Pueblo (LUPE) ramped up this type of organic outreach during the 2020 election. LUPE faced challenges similar to the challenges organizers in Florida are experiencing—including misinformation, white supremacy narratives, and COVID-19—as they race to complete the decennial census. Despite these hurdles, the LUPE team reached more than a quarter of a million infrequent voters through phone calls and text messages. “As we look at redistricting and local elections later this year, we know that the polarizing Trumpism factor is an issue we are going to have to deal with in our community in the same way that we did in this past election cycle,” Tania Chavez, LUPE’s system strategist, told us. “This is the moment when we need philanthropy to invest early and commit for the long term.” LUPE doubled its year-long voter outreach budget with last-minute donations that arrived the weekend before Election Day.
Starting in 2010, another effort& led by Mexican Americans in Arizona—originally in response to the legacy of severe immigration policies enacted by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and later, the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections—began fighting back against anti-immigrant policies across the state, including through advocacy campaigns that address cruel policies focused on immigrant families. Grassroots organizations engaged their communities by going door-to-door and sharing authentic, first-hand, lived experiences of destructive policies that dehumanized and separated Latinx families. Their efforts voted out Sheriff Arpaio—a political feat that provided momentum to the community in 2016 and contributed to a narrow win for President Biden in 2020. And while it would be reductive to assume that Latinxs in Arizona voted how they did only because they supported one contender versus another, and while we still need so much more research, we understand that the Latinx vote favored policies over party. Organizations like One Arizona and Poder Latinx, both of which focus on moving communities to vote in their own interest, deserve more funding and support.
4. Less-Traditional Leaders Have an Important Political Role to Play
The 2020 election brought forth many new leaders—including college-aged students, working mothers, undocumented people, Black women, and Latinas—who successfully advocated for the social support of their loved ones and increased voter turnout. These emerging leaders represent trusted voices that have a direct pulse on the immediate needs of and long-term solutions for their communities.
Traditionally, women vote at higher rates than men, and Latinas are no exception. According to an UnidosUS report on Latinx voting patterns, Latinas are politically more engaged with “a representation of 53.6 percent (6.9 million) of all Latino voters, compared with 46.4 percent (5.8 million) for Latino men.” One reason for this could be that Latinas have slowly stepped away from cultural expectations related to gender. More and more Latinas are taking responsibility for civic engagement in their households.
Understanding the important role Latinas played in recent elections, Yadira Sanchez, co-founder of Poder Latinx, recently launched the Poderosas fellowship program, which provides Latinas with a leadership development tool to increase voter participation. In an internal, post-election debrief, she shared: “Daughters, mothers, and workers are the mobilizers in their communities; we want to arm them with the tools so they can take control of the long-term change they want to see.”
In battleground states like Georgia, women brought their families to the voting booth—twice. This inspiring feat affirms the commitment of grassroots organizations led by women of color to build a movement for generations to come.
5. We Need to Invest in Research
Most of the headlines about Latinx voters following the 2020 election results predictably focused on East Coast states with densely populated Latinx communities. But it is important to analyze Latinx voting patterns more broadly, including by neighborhood, heritage, religion, socioeconomic status, age, and other life experiences. There is no one magic formula for reaching all Latinxs; the ethnic tag encompasses people who think and act very differently from each other.
Philanthropic funders need to practice curiosity; they need to listen to a wide range of Latinx communities and the emerging leaders within them. In practice, this means providing funding for research and data that helps define those communities. Currently, Latinx organizations receive a meager one percent of all philanthropic funding investments, making it hard to invest in research that explores the nuances of each community, and that digs into comparisons between cities, neighborhoods, and the multiple identities that shape political decisions.
EquisLabs, a Latino-led group focused on researching the Latinx electorate, has published digestible and timely resources on messaging, ads, and voting preferences. Its work has allowed our partners to find common ground, build alliances, develop policies, and political agendas that help redefine the social contract. With the right tools and resources, Latinx, grassroots civic engagement can equate to Latinx political power.
So how do we move forward? What does success look like? The Latinx electorate is growing with or without us, and it is time we provide resources that can transform eager, highly engaged women and youth into the next generation of thought leaders. We can start by creating pathways for self, family, and community advocacy by deciding to invest for more than a few years at a time. By empowering Latinx communities, we also elevate civic engagement for people of color overall and encourage greater local investment by diverse funders. This, in turn, allows our communities to dream bigger, build needed infrastructure, and take calculated risks that will move us toward an inclusive and multiracial democracy.
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Read more stories by Ana Marie Argilagos.