Puerto Rican Online Voter Registration Test with Hispanic Federation and Mi Familia Vota

To boost Puerto Rican voter registration in Florida, we ran a two-part test with Hispanic Federation and Mi Familia Vota. We worked with Hispanic Federation to develop six videos to test first in a panel environment with Civis Analytics, and then as part of an actual digital Facebook ad program with Mi Familiar Vota. 

We tested health care and generic mobilization messages in English and Spanish. Some videos had Puerto Rican-specific cues and others had more pan-Latino cues. All the videos we tested performed well across Latinx subgroups, but our most interesting finding was that Puerto Rican respondents preferred the pan-Latino videos over the videos with Puerto Rican-specific cues. It’s important to note, however, that we used a voice-over artist with an identifiably Caribbean accent for the pan-Latino videos. This suggested to us that partners could be more general with their content targeting Puerto Ricans in Florida, but we cautioned against making content that strayed too much from Caribbean culture. We also found that straight voter mobilization/registration messaging outperformed an issue message (specifically health care) and that Spanish content yielded a significantly cheaper cost-per-registration. We also saw a higher rate of actual completed registrations from our Spanish ads compared to our English ads.

For more information about this test, please download the full report.