New poll shows how much Trump, GOP radicalized Cuban-American voters in Florida
The shock factor of a new poll of Cuban American voters in Florida isn’t the bipartisan rejection of normalization of relations with Cuba under President Joe Biden.
That’s an understandable, even knee-jerk, reaction.
A new generation of Cubans is clamoring for change and demanding basic freedoms — and the Cuban regime is answering, openly and publicly, with unflinching, brutal repression.
But what is most astonishing about the poll is that 40 percent of the 400 Cuban-American voters surveyed by Bendixen & Amandi International refuse to accept the presidential election results right here, in the United States.
“It’s beyond disturbing and bordering on the incomprehensible that 40 percent of CubanAmerican voters, the vast majority who came to the United States fleeing autocracy to live in a democratic and free society, would reject the outcome of the most sacred aspect of this American democracy — a presidential election,” said pollster Fernand Amandi.
This, “while simultaneously buying into a wannabe autocrat’s evidence-free ‘Big Lie’ that said election was manipulated,” he added.
Indeed.
The portrait of Florida’s Cuban Americans that emerges from the poll reveals a community in a state of political regression, radicalized by the rhetoric of former President Donald Trump, the Florida GOP and the embrace of QAnon conspiracies spread on social media, in rightwing publications and on radio and television talk shows.
The ignorance is astounding and will have profound consequences, not only for Biden’s Cuba policy — who takes into account delusional people? — but also for Florida.
Certainly, more profound and nuanced study of the state of our community is needed, but the survey confirms similar findings of recent Florida International University political polling.
CUBAN-AMERICAN VOTERS
Why does the mindset of Cuban-American voters matter?
Reliable when and where it counts, at the polls, Cuban Americans turn out to vote in larger numbers than other Hispanics in every election. They have played, and will likely play again, a key role in high-profile elections like the 2022 race for governor.
The voter profile that rises from this poll means that Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump disciple, has a big chunk of the CubanAmerican vote in his electoral pocket.
An estimated 1.5 million Cubans live in Florida, making them the largest Hispanic electorate group in the state. The second-largest, Puerto Ricans, billed in 2016 as Democrats’ “secret weapon,” haven’t lived up to the moniker. In fact, a larger number of Latinos, including Puerto Ricans and other nationalities, voted Republican in 2020 than in previous presidential elections.
TRUMP, BIDEN & CUBA
On the Cuba issue, Biden can’t afford to ignore that, according to the poll, 66 percent of Cuban Americans, all of whom voted in the 2020 election where Biden under-performed, said they oppose normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba.
It’s a big flip from the gains Democrats made during the Obama years, when there was strong bipartisan support among Cuban Americans for his engagement policy.
A Bendixen & Amandi poll at the time even measured majority support for ending the embargo.
Now the centrist Democratic president and his administration — more experienced in foreign policy than former President Obama and more capable by leaps and bounds than Trump — are watching Cuba and listening as they review Trump’s politically motivated hard-line policy.
It’s proving to be no easy task, given the constant harassment and arrests of dissident artists and independent journalists, and the prison sentences handed down on trumped-up charges — all human-rights violations the Biden administration has denounced.
Last week, Biden sent a clear message to Cuba.
“A Cuba policy shift [from President Trump’s sanctions] is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
Clearly, Biden must find a way to hold Cuba accountable for human-rights violations, but he must also remain mindful of the need for U.S. presence on the island.
The 66 percent should concern him, but not paralyze him.
Cuban Americans can torpedo Biden’s shaping of a new foreign policy or — on the flip side, if courted and recruited properly — they can become instrumental and invested in the success of groundbreaking policy.
And that’s what is needed, a game-changer with Cuba.
Small steps, datadriven to measure the effectiveness of sanctions, and timed to improvements on the Cuba side.
Reopening consular operations, restoring remittances that go directly to families and fledgling entrepreneurs, and lifting some travel restrictions are measures that can benefit the Cuban people on both shores.
Then there’s a conscientious third way to go, one that doesn’t give in to Cuba, but neither to the banana-republic politics of the 40 percent of the Trump crowd.
Biden must find it.