Language Dominance, Bilingualism, and Latino Political Participation in the United States

ALTHOUGH APPROXIMATELY TWO-THIRDS OF the Latino electorate in the United States is Spanish speaking (bilingual or Spanish dominant),1 the independent impact of this demographic characteristic on voting and on participation in nonvoting campaign-related activities has been ignored by analysts and political activists alike. The objective of this article is to contribute to filling this void. Specifically, the article theorizes that non-English-dominant Latinos (bilingual and Spanish dominant) have access to Spanish-language media and social environments that make them more and differently informed about the U.S. political world than English-dominant Latinos. We use multivariate analytic techniques to measure the independent impact of language competence and find that the results of our analysis largely support our initial predictions. That is, we show that bilinguals and Spanish-dominant Latinos register and vote at rates equal to or higher than English-dominant Latinos or monolinguals who have access to resources that the major models of electoral behavior find predict high levels of political involvement.2 We also find that bilinguals participate in nonelectoral campaign activities at rates comparable to English-dominant Latinos

Dominance (genetics) · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Political science · Politics · Chemistry · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy

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