Why U.S. Latinos Are Difficult to Poll

*Language, distrust of government officials, the high use of cell phones and low voter participation makes polling Latinos more difficult and less accurate than traditional polling methods. But, as in so many news stories about Latinos, this one is framed to make Latinos responsible for the problem, when the fault lies as well in the lack of pollsters’ adapting to the Latino community. VL


th atlantic logoBy Maura Ewing, The Atlantic

It is not easy to accurately poll any population, but Latinos in the U.S. appear to pose specific challenges. “There is an art and a science to polling in Latino communities,” says Lourdes Torres, the director of special projects at Univision, a the Spanish-language network, which is also known for accuracy in this field. There seem to be three major obstacles to effectively polling this fast-growing voting population (66,000 Latinos becoming eligible to vote every month).

First, there’s language. Nearly three-quarters of Latino Americans report that they speak either only Spanish or a combination of Spanish and English at home. Simply having a direct translation of the survey questions is not enough, according a recent report by The Pew Research Center. Survey translations must take cultural differences and language nuances into account, so that all respondents will understand the questions in the same way.

For example, the question: “Do you talk about the campaign with people in your family?” would not fare well with a literal translation, says Courtney Kennedy, the director of survey research at Pew. “In the Spanish language, ‘family’ tends to include more extended relationships, whereas in the English language when you say family people generally interpret that as immediate family, people that live in your household,” she says. “So you could get a systematically different answer for that type of question for Spanish speaking respondents versus English, just because that concept of family is different,” she says.

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[Photo courtesy of Mi Familia Vota Facebook]

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