Fluency matters when candidates speak Spanish

Speaking Spanish on the campaign trail may seem like a good way to connect with some voters, but new research finds it can actually hurt the chances of Hispanic candidates who aren’t native speakers.

The study examines how speaking Spanish affects candidates’ success when voters know nothing else about them. The research included a national sample of Hispanic and Anglo voters.

Researchers Marques Zárate and Enrique Quezada-Llanes, both graduate students in the political science department at Rice University, and Angel Armenta, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, ran experiments in which participants listened to an audio clip of a hypothetical candidate’s stump speech. They varied the ethnicity of the candidate (Anglo or Hispanic) and the language of the speech (English, non-native Spanish, and native-like Spanish).

The researchers found Hispanic support for both Anglo and Hispanic candidates was higher when the candidates spoke native-level Spanish compared to English only. They also found that non-native-level Spanish yields the same support for Anglo candidates as just speaking English, while support decreases for Hispanic candidates who don’t speak native-level Spanish.

“Our results suggest that candidates can effectively appeal to Hispanic voters using Spanish-language messages, but their fluency matters,” Quezada-Llanes says.

The study appears in the American Political Science Review.

Source: Rice University