As part of her work as a volunteer with Cubanos con Biden in Miami, JennyLee Molina managed several social media groups dedicated to debunking political memes, pictures and videos that were circulating among Latinos in South Florida, a task made even more daunting by the sheer quantity of content shared weeks leading up to the election.
“We dealt with hundreds of items a day,” said Molina, who also works in digital communications with Joe Biden for President. “It was like swimming against a tide because every time we got one strong piece of information out there, there would be 10 more things even more outrageous to deal with. It was like whack-a-mole.”
Advocacy groups have voiced concerns over the “alarming” amount of misinformation targeted to Latino communities prior to the election, though it’s unclear to what extent misinformation may have influenced Latino voters.
What the election outcome has demonstrated — and what Latinos and advocates have been saying for years — is that the Latino vote is powerful and complex. While nationally, the majority may lean Democratic, when it comes to the state level, there are many different constituencies that cannot be so easily counted on by Democrats or Republicans.
There were about 32 million Latinos eligible to vote in the 2020 election.
According to ABC News’ exit polls, 59% of Latino men voted Democrat; 36% voted Republican. Sixty-nine percent of Latinas voted Democrat and 30% voted Republican.
Republicans made some gains with Latino voters since the 2016 election, particularly in South Florida and border communities in Texas, the Washington Post reported.
Biden, however, made gains in other states, helped by a record number of Latino voters who cast early votes in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to Voto Latino.
ABC News interviewed disinformation experts, campaign workers, and advocates on both sides of the political spectrum to get a sense of what factors were at play in the minds of Latino voters across the country this year.
The most overarching and effective disinformation narrative, according to Jaime Longoria, an investigative researcher with First Draft News, was an effort to play on what he called an “anti-Blackness” tactic — a part of the push of disinformation to Latino voters, particularly in Florida.❐
ABC News
