The politics of Latino publics: Immigration reform, political participation and intention to vote

•Acculturation predicts issue importance, but not vote likelihood or political participation.•Less acculturated Latinos perceive immigration reform as more important than do acculturated Latinos, revealing a perceptual gap.•Media use is not directly predictive of vote likelihood or political participation but is associated with political interest.•Politically interested Latinos are more attuned to media; media can gain the attention of Latinos not yet politically interested.•Political interest drove vote likelihood and political participation among Latinos. Latinos are the largest U.S. minority group and are poised to play an increasingly important role in U.S. society. Public relations practitioners who work in politics should be interested in what motivates young Latinos to participate in politics. This study reports the findings of a national nonprobability survey with young Latinos (N=434). The analysis explores how demographic variables, acculturation, political ideology and media use predict perceptions of the importance of immigration reform, reported political participation, and vote likelihood in the 2016U.S. presidential election. Of the dependent variables, findings show that acculturation (β=−0.13) only predicts perceptions of the importance of immigration reform, suggesting acculturation’s effects are issue specific. Interest in politics is the largest influential factor in predicting all of the dependent variables.