First look: Latino consultants launch bipartisan news aggregation site
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A bilingual sign stands outside a polling center at public library in Austin, Texas. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
A pair of Latino consultants — one Democrat and one Republican — is launching a new website focused specifically on curating news about Latino voters.
The big picture: Latino.vote aims to be a RealClearPolitics or Drudge Report-like aggregation source for any news about Hispanic voters, a growing bloc whose political power is being closely tracked amid recent shifts in voting behavior.
- The website promises to feature updated polling about Latino voters, news from other media sites and opinion pieces by Latino consultants and advocates.
Details: The project is an extension of the Latino Vote podcast run by Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid, two Latino political consultants from opposite sides of the political spectrum.
- Both Rocha and Madrid say Democrats and Republicans are ignoring the needs of Mexican American voters in the American Southwest and Puerto Rican voters in New York and Florida.
- They contend media outlets continue to get information wrong about Latino voting behavior and social changes occurring in various Hispanic communities.
- Rocha and Madrid also say a shortage of Latino journalists and distrust in media have helped contribute to disinformation on social media, which experts say has influenced Latino voters.
Zoom out: Websites and apps more popular with Latinos in the U.S. than other groups make them more susceptible both to exposure to misinformation and to sharing it, according to a Nielsen report.
- The report found 28% of the content Latinos see on news websites they most frequently visit was flagged as biased, conspiracy-based, or pseudoscientific.
What they're saying: "We're taking on disinformation in a bipartisan way," Rocha told Axios.
- "This website will fill a big need for journalists, academics, political professionals, and elected officials,” Madrid said in a statement.
The big picture: Data, surveys and recent primary elections show that Republicans are making inroads with Latinos, but Hispanic women are shifting back to Democrats as abortion has become a more pressing national issue.
- Hispanics now account for 18.7% — 62.1 million people — of the total U.S. population.
- There were around 30.6 million eligible Latino voters in 2020, according to a City University of New York study.
