Political candidates use Spanish-language appeals in efforts to increase their support among Hispanic voters. We argue that candidates, Hispanic or not, can use Spanish to signal closeness to Hispanics and posit that the effectiveness of these appeals is conditional on proficiency. To test this, we run two experiments where participants listen to an audio clip of a hypothetical candidate’s stump speech. We vary the ethnicity of the candidate (Anglo or Hispanic) and the language of the speech (English, non-native Spanish, and native-like Spanish). We find that Hispanic support for the Anglo and Hispanic candidates is higher in the native-like Spanish condition compared with the English-only condition. Relative to the English condition, non-native Spanish does not increase support for the Anglo candidate, but it decreases support for the Hispanic candidate. We find mixed effects for Anglo participants. Our results suggest that candidates can effectively appeal to Hispanic voters using Spanish-language messages.
Olson, Shayla and Enrique Quezada-Llanes. 2024. “How Sermons Became More Political in the Trump Era.” In Paul A. Djupe and A.E. Sokhey (Eds), Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics: Change and Continuity. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Quezada-Llanes, Enrique. 2020. “U.S. Citizenship Test.” In Voting and Political Representation in America: Issues and Trends, ed. Mark P. Jones.
Under Review
“Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Minority Participation and Representation in the United States.” Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science.
“Voices from the Pulpit: Discourse on Racial Justice and Gun Violence in U.S. Congregations” (with Nela Mrchkovska)
Over the past years, many religious congregations have addressed issues of racial justice and gun violence following the killing of George Floyd and recent mass shootings in places like Uvalde (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), and Monterey Park (California). However, existing work suggests that which places of worship respond and how they respond depends on congregational, denominational, and contextual factors. Most of this work relies on self-reports from congregants or clergy. We take a different approach by directly observing the messages religious individuals hear during worship. Using large language models (LLMs) to help identify which sermons include discussions of racial justice or gun violence, we analyze over 200,000 sermons across 2,863 congregations. We find that, even though discussions of racial issues and gun violence are relatively rare events in religious sermons, major tragic events like the killing of George Floyd and several mass shootings taking place between 2018 and 2023 increase the probability of congregation leaders addressing these topics. We also find that, in some cases, Mainline Protestant sermons are more responsive to these tragic events compared to Evangelical Protestant sermons.
Work in Progress
“When Candidates Become Preachers: Religious Appeals in Campaign Advertisements in the U.S. from 2010-2020” (with Pedro Magarao Ribeiro*)
“The Contours of Latine Interests” (with Marques G. Zárate)
“The Role of Spanish Language on Latino Group Consciousness”
“The Use of Shibboleths in American Political Campaigns”