Second Generation Hispanic-American Young Adults' Response to Political Advertisements from the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign

Abstract

Political campaigns use television advertisements to win Latinos’ votes. These advertisements, which are solely for electoral purposes, may not fully understand the differences in the Latino population that can influence their political views and tend to clump Latinos as one homogenous group just because they all speak Spanish. This study used focus groups to examine the opinions of second-generation Hispanic American young adults about Spanish and English political television advertisements from the 2008 Obama and McCain Presidential campaigns. Male and female participants thought that neither the Spanish nor the English advertisements were targeted at them, and their thoughts differed slightly according to their gender. Furthermore, participants disliked attack advertisements and advertisements they thought were misleading or contained false information. They were more receptive to those that contained policy information and those that specifically talked about education.