‘We captured magic’: the telenovelas reaching Latino voters in swing states

"Una chingona always knows when to use her own voice."

So begins the first installment of a telenovela geared toward young Latina voters. Chingonas, which means empowered women in Mexican Spanish, are the target audience for the non-profit Poder NC Action - a Latino North Carolina-based voter engagement group. This year, the largest ever cohort of young North Carolina-born Latinos will be eligible to vote in a presidential election.

The unique eight-part series released last month on YouTube was created to close the gap between registration and turnout for Latino voters, who have historically voted less than some other groups, in the key battleground state. In the short films, the main character Alexia is a young Latina who goes from struggling to voice her opinions with her community and family to encouraging strangers to turn out to vote.

"We captured magic somehow," Irene Godinez, the executive director of Poder NC Action, said about the telenovelas. "The fact that 18-year-old boys to a 70-something-year-old woman feel seen in this and are excited about it is unheard of."

Now, the films' reach has extended beyond North Carolina, with voter engagement organizations in California, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Georgia and Colorado featuring them on social media platforms. The videos appear in Hulu and YouTube TV ads; the non-profit Voto Latino will use them in a digital public service announcement ahead of the election, and in the fall, Latino fraternal chapters, such as Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc and Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Inc, will screen the telenovelas on campuses around the country.

Nationwide, an estimated 36.2 million Latino voters will be eligible to vote this year, nearly 15% of the electorate, according to Pew Research Center. Godinez foresaw the large swath of eligible voters coming to age when she launched the non-profit in 2020: "My calculation was, if we start talking to them right now that they're in high school and we can get them in as volunteers," said Godinez. "Then by the time that they become actual voting age, they'll be not only informed, but they'll be willing to inform their peers."

Before Poder NC Action's inception in 2020, political parties and advocacy groups did not invest in voter engagement efforts for Latino voters in North Carolina, said Godinez. She sought to create culturally relevant voter engagement initiatives that spoke directly to young Latino voters.