Latinos Are Key Swing Voters in 2024 Election – and Targets of Misinformation
The significance of Latino voters in the 2024 election has made them targets of disinformation. A collaborative alliance of large and small Latino fact-checking groups has created Factchequeado to combat that disinformation.
“Latinos have immense voting power and can make a decisive difference in elections, yet they are an under-messaged, under-prioritized audience,” says Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, a national nonprofit encouraging Latino civic participation. “Our vote has an impact. These bad actors know this, and one way to influence the Latino vote is to misinform.”
“We are at the front lines of fighting misinformation in our communities,” says María Barquín, program director of Chavez Radio Group, a nonprofit that runs a network of Spanish-language stations in Arizona, California and Nevada. “There’s a lot at stake in 2024 for our communities. And so we need to amp up these efforts now more than ever.”
Pew Research estimates there are 36.2 million Latinos eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020. Eligible Latino voters now outnumber Black voters and represent 14.7 percent of the total U.S. electorate. In the 2020 general election, Latinos made up only 7.4 percent of the electorate.
The five states with the highest number of Latino voters in order are California, Texas, Florida, New York and Arizona. Latinos represent 45 percent of eligible voters in New Mexico and 22 percent in Nevada, both considered swing states in the 2024 presidential race. Latinos account for 9 percent of eligible voters in both Oregon and Washington.
Only 33 percent of Latino voters nationwide are 50 or older, compared with 48 percent for all voters. Latinos between the ages of 18 and 29 represent 31 percent of all Latino voters.
Co-founders Clara Jiménez-Cruz, CEO of Maldita.es,and Laura Zommer, editor-in-chief of Chequeado.
Factchequeado
Factchequeado is a collaborative effort to monitor social media and news outlets to spot and fact-check potential misinformation or disinformation. Factchequeado also offers training for Spanish-speaking people and journalists on how to fact-check questionable claims.
“Factchequeado is a digital medium of misinformation or disinformation verification that creates open-source original Spanish content, available on various platforms and social networks,” according to its website. “We believe collaboration with citizens and local media helps us hear first-hand the relevant issues of communities.”
The fact-checking initiative builds on similar projects in Spain and Argentina. The organizations behind those projects united forces in 2021 to provide a Spanish language fact-checking site for Latinos in the United States.
“It has become fundamental to produce fact-checked content in Spanish especially aimed at underserved communities to limit the impact of mis- and disinformation,” the Factchequeado website says. “By collaborating alongside fact-checking organizations and local media outlets, we facilitate their access to verified information through Spanish-speaking media in the U.S. and the different platforms they use for news consumption and sharing.”
It’s unknown whether Spanish-speaking fact-checking will encourage larger Latino turnout rates, including in Oregon’s rural counties. While Oregon’s 2022 mod-term election voter turnout was the highest in the nation at 62 percent, Latino voter turnout was significantly less in Umatilla, Morrow and Malheur counties, where Latinos represent around 25 percent of eligible voters.
Menlo College political science professor Melissa Michelson, who studies Latino voting behavior, stresses the importance of outreach by local community groups. In an effort to boost minority voter participation, the 2021 Oregon legislature passed a bill requiring counties to publish ballots in languages, including Spanish, with significant minorities. Fact-checking in Spanish publications may help voters sift through campaign claims and misinformation and feel confident enough to cast their ballots.
Laura Zommer, the leader of Chequeado.com in Argentina and cofounder of Factchequeado, explains, “We listen to our audience and ask them what they are worried about, what’s important to them. Unlike a typical journalism outfit, we’re not the ones determining the important or “trendy” topics. For example, our Factchequeado chatbot allows people to ask us questions, send us links or pictures to find out if the content is fake or has been manipulated. This helps us learn about disinformation in real time, fill gaps of information and build a community that quickly spreads fact-checks. “
“The way algorithms work, fact-checking in the wrong ways accidentally amplifies misinformation.”
Coping with Misinformation
The saturation of misinformation has continued to deepen since fake news burst on the scene in the 2016 election. “We haven’t seen anything like this in our postwar modern political reality,” says Howard Lavine, PhD, a political psychologist at the University of Minnesota who studies the psychology of mass political behavior. “Misinformation in politics is one of the most difficult problems to crack.”
Social media has enabled the spread of misinformation. There are few effective boundaries and platform algorithms are programmed to boost controversial and divisive content. However, Lavine and other psychologists believe social media also can be an effective vehicle to combat misinformation.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found, “The more people hear those falsehoods, the more likely they are to believe them – even if the information contradicts their prior beliefs.” Research also confirms best practices to debunk misinformation, which include fact-checking.
“But there is a right way to approach it,” says Jay Van Bavel, PhD, a professor of psychology and neural sciences at New York University and co-author of The Power of Us. “Debunking is most effective when you can explain why the information is false and provide alternative information.”
“The way algorithms work, fact-checking in the wrong ways accidentally amplifies misinformation,” Van Bavel explains. “A better way is to screenshot the incorrect statement and share it with a clear explanation of facts and a link to an original expert source.”
Another tactic is pre-bunking misinformation. Sander van der Linden, PhD, a social psychologist at Cambridge University, believes it is important for psychologists to avoid arguing substance and instead help people understand how they can fall prey to misinformation. He notes people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more apt to believe in other conspiracy theories.
Researchers have designed infographics, videos and even games to help people learn to recognize and resist persuasion techniques used in misinformation. In one example, van der Linden and colleagues showed that a pre-bunking game significantly improved participants’ ability to identify misinformation techniques, while increasing confidence in their own judgments.
Anti-Misinformation Pushback
Fact-checkers and misinformation researchers have become targets for attacks. Ohio Republican Congressman Him Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has accused misinformation foes of collusion to suppress conservative speech. X, formerly known as Twitter, filed suit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
“There’s been a huge chilling effect on researchers speaking out about misinformation. Between trolls and lawsuits, it’s the Wild West out there,” van der Linden says. That chilling effect extends to the National Institutes of Health, which halted a $150 million program to improve communications involving health information, citing legal threats as one factor in its decision.
“Psychologists can help bridge the partisan divide by fighting misinformation in ways that aren’t polarizing,” van der Linden advises, such as focusing on decision-making and recognizing manipulation rather than the content of an argument. He says, “Giving people the tools they need to make better decisions is within our expertise as psychologists.”
Fact-Checking
There are multiple fact-checking resources for people who seek them out and believe what they read. FactCheck.org is a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. It fact-checks a wide variety of claims by all candidates in the 2024 election.
Prominent fact-checking appearing on its site on April 11 included a false claim by Donald Trump about Roe v. Wade and his misleading chart on illegal immigration. It also included a misleading claim by President Biden about Latino unemployment and an entry indicating Biden took a Trump comment about entitlements out of context. A misleading claim by Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, about women’s fertility rates also was cited.
USA Today and other publications have fact-checking teams, primarily focused on the presidential campaign. Major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post publish detailed fact-checking.
The New York Times provided a comprehensive fact-check of Trump’s 20-minute Super Tuesday victory speech. The article cited false or misleading claims related to immigrants, the border wall, inflation, his tax cut, U.S. oil production, the origin of COVID-19 and Afghanistan.
The Times also fact-checked Biden’s 2024 State of the Union speech, citing misleading statements related to job creation, private sector investment, carbon emissions, the federal deficit, billionaire tax rates and proposed GOP Social Security cuts. It also fact-checked the Republican response by Alabama Senator Katie Britt on issues related to national crime rates and IVF restrictions.
Fact-checking is only as good as its readership and its believability. Many Trump supporters don’t read or believe what The Times or The Post publishes. Many Biden supporters may not take the time to read fact-checking about their preferred candidate.
A highly polarized electorate is so dug in that fact-checking may not make a difference in their political viewpoint. At a minimum, rigorous fact-checking provides information intended to inform. Fact-checking makes it harder for voters or non-voters to complain after an election that they didn’t know. For voters paying attention, fact-checking offers the best hope of knowing when and how a politician is blowing smoke.
