Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters - Tapa dura

"In Campaigning to the New Electorate, Marisa Abrajano examines how advertising directed to Latinos impacted voter behavior in the 2000-2004 congressional and presidential elections. . . a valuable contribution to the area of understanding Latino political behavior." -- Sylvia R. Lazos "This is a compelling study of campaign advertising in an increasingly diverse nation. The topic is quite timely and the question of how campaigns reach out to Latino voters will continue to be a subject of great importance into the future. The book is fresh, informative, and readable." -- Janelle Wong "Campaigning to the New American Electorate is an impressive first entry in what will surely become a stape subfield in Latino political studies, as more scholars employ sophisticated data analysis to assess the impact of candidate advertising strategies on the behavior of the Latino electorate." -- Tony Affigne * Perspectives on Politics * "This is an important and groundbreaking piece of research in an area that is badly understudied and yet of interest to a wide audience, including scholars and political practitioners. It is well known that the size and political power of Latinos in the United States is increasing dramatically. However, our understanding of how to encourage Latinos to vote as well as how to influence their vote choices is relatively unsophisticated. This study is a major step forward in filling that void in the literature." -- Melissa R. Michelson, Associate Professor of Political Science, California State University * East Bay *

This is one of the first research endeavors to systematically compare the content of Spanish and English language campaign ads over an extended period of time (2000-2004) and across a variety of elections (Presidential, Congressional and Gubernatorial). Not only does it examine the way in which politicians have communicated to the nation's two largest electorates, it also looks at the impact of these ads on the political choices that Latinos make.