New Poll Reveals What Latino Voters REALLY Care About in 2026
TelevisaUnivision's CEO Daniel Alegre joins the Latino Vote Podcast to share new data — and a stark warning for campaigns that still aren't listening.
Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid welcomed a guest who sits at the very center of Latino political and cultural life in America: Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision, the largest Spanish-language media company in the United States. What followed was one of the most data-rich, candid, and consequential conversations the podcast has produced to date.
The Poll: Affordability Above Everything
TelevisaUnivision, in partnership with the Harris polling firm, conducted a new survey of Latino voters, including those who had just cast ballots in the recent Texas elections, and the findings leave little room for interpretation.
76% of Latino respondents identified the cost of living and inflation as their most pressing concern. Not abortion. Not foreign policy. Not Greenland. Groceries. Rent. Healthcare. The pocketbook issues that hit working Latino families hardest.
“That was issue number one, issue number two, and issue number three,” Alegre said plainly. “Everything else was absolutely secondary.”
The poll also found that 82% of Latino voters now believe their vote is a critically decisive factor in American elections — a sign that the community is not only growing in size but in political self-awareness. And perhaps the most staggering data point of the conversation: 50% of all new voter registrations in the United States are Hispanic. A number, as Madrid noted, that is still accelerating.
The Message Is Still Not Getting Through
Despite the data, Alegre points out how many campaigns continue to miss the mark. He described sitting with senior advisors from major 2024 campaigns and listening to them outline their Latino outreach strategies, only to find them anchored in issues that simply did not reflect what Latino communities were actually talking about.
“I said, I don’t think you’re listening,” Alegre recalled of one such meeting. “Affordability, affordability, and affordability. That’s what they care about.”
The mistakes, he explained, tend to follow a predictable pattern. Campaigns wait until the final two weeks to begin outreach. They assume a Spanish surname on a staffer’s business card is a substitute for genuine community engagement. They advertise on English-language media and wonder why the message doesn’t stick. And they rely on broad demographic assumptions that have been disproven election cycle after election cycle.
“The definition of insanity,” Alegre said, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
What Getting It Right Actually Looks Like
Alegre, Rocha, and Madrid all pointed to Ted Cruz’s 2024 Senate race as a case study in effective Latino outreach. Cruz advertised in both English and Spanish, tailored his message to issues Latino voters actually cared about, showed up personally to Spanish-language media, despite not being a fluent Spanish speaker, and built his Latino engagement over time rather than in a last-minute sprint. He won.
Ruben Gallego’s Arizona Senate race was cited as another model. Rocha, who served as a senior advisor on the campaign, described an intentional, early, and layered approach to Spanish-language advertising that drove meaningful overperformance with Latino voters.
And then there was James Talarico in Texas: a candidate who engaged the Latino community early, showed up at the events and cultural moments that matter, and won every single Latino precinct he needed.
The 2026 Battleground
Then they turned to the races that will define the next chapter of Latino political power in America. Chuck and Mike set the stage for the 2026 battleground: the wide-open California Governor’s race, where Latino voters could determine the outcome of a crowded field; the Texas Governor and Senate races; an Arizona Governor’s race; a competitive Florida Senate race; and a string of targeted congressional seats along the Texas Rio Grande Valley and in Miami, where a new high-profile candidate just entered the race.
Alegre’s message to any candidate running in any of these states was consistent: do not assume the Latino vote is coming to you. Go earn it. Go earn it now.
He also revealed a striking data point from the Texas election cycle: one in five Latino voters in their survey recalled seeing a Spanish-language political ad. That means roughly 25% of Latino voters were completely unreached by any political message whatsoever.
“Twenty-five percent,” Alegre said. “That’s who you’re leaving on the table.”
The VIX Factor: Reaching the Next Generation
For campaigns thinking about digital outreach, Alegre offered a critical distinction. Algorithms on platforms like Facebook or YouTube may flag someone as Hispanic because they watched a Bad Bunny video. That data, he argued, is fundamentally unreliable.
TelevisaUnivision’s streaming platform VIX — currently the fastest-growing subscription streaming service in the United States — operates differently. If someone is on VIX, Alegre said, there is a 99.9% probability they are Hispanic. The platform’s targeting, combined with TelevisaUnivision’s household data graph that aggregates local TV, national TV, radio, digital, and third-party sources, gives campaigns the most precise Latino targeting available anywhere in the media landscape.
“If you want to find a Hispanic voter,” Alegre said plainly, “we’ll deliver them for you.”
Referenced in this Episode:
→ New TelevisaUnivision & Harris Texas Latino Voter Study - HIGHLIGHTS MAJORS STRATEGIC DISCONNECT BETWEEN ELECTED LEADERS AND HISPANIC VOTERS IN TEXAS
View on TelevisaUnivision’s Website →
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