It is clear that many at Univision are still trying to process what happened last month. This much was evident on the most recent edition of the network's weekly public affairs program, Al Punto, as both host and guest struggled to understand the outcome of the election.
Witness this exchange between host Jorge Ramos and former Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) Chairman Al Cárdenas:
JORGE RAMOS, AL PUNTO HOST: Al, I'd like to ask you about the Latino vote. Some...some data...suggests that one out of every three Latinos voted for Donald Trump. And among Cuban-Americans, more than half of them voted for Donald Trump. How do you explain this? Why did they do it?
AL CARDENAS, FORMER CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN PARTY OF FLORIDA: Yes, yes...I don't know if it was a third but I'm certain that it was a broader Latino vote than what Mitt Romney himself had. That is difficult for me to understand. I believe it was primarily the desire for change, that the Latino believed was necessary, as did the rest of the country. And I believe that Latino(s) hopeful for change voted for someone who - although they did not like him - did not also represent the status quo that Secretary Clinton represented. I believe that the Latino vote for Trump was not so much a vote in favor of Trump, but they instead wanted to see change, and they didn't think that this change would come at the hands of Secretary Clinton.
At the outset of his interview, Cárdenas observed that he had been absent from Al Punto for over a year (we covered his last interview here). After that extended absence, Ramos brings him back in order to discuss the election, and the many things that everyone seems to have gotten wrong along the way. (Side note: Jorge Ramos grossly misrepresented Cárdenas' service as one of being tasked only with pursuing Latino votes. This is wildly inaccurate. As RPOF Chairman, Cárdenas mission was to go after every vote in furtherance of helping Florida Republicans win statewide office - not just the Latino vote.)
The exchange above is fascinating because it spotlights the fact that Univision is still stuck in a pattern of cognitive dissonance with regard to the Hispanic vote, after an election that saw the network risk big and lose big. They still don't get it.
Why, Ramos asks, did apprxoimately one-third of all Hispanics vote for Trump? How could this happen? Al Punto viewers mercifully get to hear Cárdenas' take instead of Ramos' ill-considered hypothesis (race-treason). But even then, Cárdenas musters vague platitudes about change and status quo (credit, though, for stating that Clinton was an awful candidate - something that long went unsaid at Univision).
Hispanics that voted for Trump had very specific reasons for doing so, whether Cuba policy, jobs, the economy, Supreme Court concerns (a hugely underreported concern among Catholics and Evangelicals), and otherwise a rejection of Clinton's corruption. These reasons went against the grain of everything that Univision emphasized in its reporting over the entire course of its election coverage.
In the aftermath, it appears that the solution is going to be to continue to look inward, and ignore what really happened. Not only did Hispanic Trump voters reject Clinton - they also rejected Univision; a pattern that mirrors that of the broader electorate's rejection of establishment media.
Univision would be well-served to look beyond its current stable of analysts, in order to accomodate and include real ideological diversity through which its viewership may get some actual answers as to what happened last November. The alternative - to recycle failed narratives through its echo chamber - is no longer a viable option.
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