New study shows growth in Puerto Ricans eligible to vote

The number of Puerto Ricans eligible to vote in Florida now equals that of the politically powerful Cuban-American population, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

The 6.2 percent increase of Hispanic registered voters since 2016 also more than tripled that of the 1.8 percent growth of all new registered voters.

Overall, more than 2.1 million Hispanics in Florida are registered to vote in Florida, now making up more than 16 percent of all registered voters. The report looked at voter data as of Aug. 31, just after the primary.

What the data doesn’t show are just how many Puerto Ricans, Cubans or other Latino groups are actually registered. That’s because those numbers aren’t broken by their ethnic origin.

But Puerto Ricans now make up 31 percent of the 3 million eligible Hispanic voters, equaling the share of Cuban-Americans. Island-born Puerto Ricans alone make up nearly a fifth of all eligible Hispanic voters.

Though the exact number of new voters resulting from the influx of evacuees after Hurricane Maria is hard to pin down, the number of island-born Puerto Ricans eligible to vote in Florida has grown by about 126,000, or 30 percent, since 2016.

The number of eligible voters of Puerto Rican descent who are U.S. mainland-born, meanwhile, only grew by 10,000 people, or 3 percent. The number of Cuban eligible voters increased by 4 percent.

Another way of measuring the growth in Puerto Rican voters is looking at which counties saw the most growth among Hispanic voters.

On 14 of the 18 counties with the largest Puerto Rican populations, Hispanic voter registration grew faster than the statewide Hispanic average of 6.2 percent. Among them are Polk, Osceola, Lake, Volusia and Seminole.

But when it comes to the four counties with the largest Puerto Rican populations in Florida – Orange, Broward, Hillsborough and Miami-Dade – Hispanic voter growth was equal to or slower than the state average.

As for party affiliation, while the number of Hispanics registering as Democrats increased by 5 percent since 2016 to 837,000, more than double the 2 percent growth among Republicans to 527,000, the number of Hispanic registered voters with no party affiliation has grown by 14 percent to 775,000.

Republicans coming in third marks a vast change since 2006, when Republicans had the biggest share of registered Hispanics.