At some point, I heard a Puerto Rican notable mention that the number of people who have left PR for the states would not forget Trump’s response to the hurricane crisis and would be able to vote for president.
Is the diaspora large enough to make any kind of dent? Would most of them be likely to vote the same way?
According to this recent story, about 135,000 Puerto Ricans have left the island for 49 states in the U.S. Except for Florida, no state has even 5,000 of them.
Of the 56,000 who ended up in Florida, 20% of them are in school and too young to vote. The county with the most settlers only has about 4,500, so it’s unlikely they’d have much influence as a bloc.
The article says the total may increase to 500,000 over the next year or so. If 1/3 of them end in Florida and 80% of those are voters, that would be around 130,000. Enough to swing a statewide election (Trump won Florida by a few thousand less than that), but that’s a lot of assumptions.
Florida is a swing state and they have much reason to dislike Trump. I think there is every reason to think it could make a difference there. Elsewhere likely not. But they have to register and vote.
I think you have to consider the Puerto Ricans who were here before the hurricane hit and saw their former homeland neglected by the US. One would think they were quite dissatisfied with the response and would have incentive to vote Democratic.
Exactly. It’s not just the people who escaped due to the hurricane, it’s also the Puerto Ricans who were already here, and their extended networks of family and friends on the mainland.
New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut actually have more Puerto Ricans by percentage than Florida, and New York actually has a couple hundred thousand more overall than Florida. There are also large populations of Puerto Ricans (100,000+) in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, and Texas, and along with NJ, NY, CT, and FL these states have a combined 3.74 million Puerto Ricans, or over 80% of the total PR population on the mainland (as of the 2010 census).
It isn’t like that specific community was heavily in his camp before the hurricane. Trump had decent support among Cuban Americans and among Hispanics those who did vote for him are often doing so out of religious conservatism and, like other who vote in religious right terms, it takes a lot to move them from a GOP candidate who will appoint the right judges.
Well, consider that there are also US residents who have island roots other than Puerto Rican. How many US voters with ties to Haiti are going to vote for the GOP now? How many* cubanos?* How many Dominicans? I think any citizen who has family from the Antilles, or used to work there, or anyone who’s ever had to deal with hurricanes or typhoons, has to see this party as lacking, both morally and in competence.
Heck, I’m from tornado country, and I’d be pretty annoyed if tornado-hit towns here were treated the way Puerto Rico was treated, and that’s always a far smaller area with relatively easy ability to leave.
But it’s still the same question: how many voted GOP, specifically Trump, before the hurricane crisis?
Again there have been two Hispanic populations that significantly support the GOP: those who vote for the Christian religious right “family values” reasons like positions on abortion; and Cubanos. Dominicans? Already few voting GOP and the biggest population is in NY anyway. Haitians? Those from points south of Mexico? Mostly already in the D camp.
Those religious “family values” voters are pretty immovable. Maybe, maybe, it will add to the move of the younger Cuban-American voters away from their parents’ fairly steadfast GOP support, which matters not because of absolute numbers but because Florida. And we’ve seen how even a few votes in Florida can matter.
And other coastal Americans in the South? Won’t change their votes.
Even if this doesn’t change what side anyone is on, it can still motivate people to get out to vote who weren’t before. I can’t imagine that the Hispanic voter turnout is much different from the general American populace, which means there’s a lot of room for improvement.
It is much different from the general American populace … it is much lower. But if Trump’s toxic rhetoric before the last election didn’t do it you think this will?
Puerto Ricans didn’t start moving to the mainland just last year. Connections to the island remain very strong for a large number of them, and are quite aware of how they get treated by the government in *both *places. Yes, some number have relocated, a number reportedly in the hundreds of thousands just in Florida, in addition to the several hundreds of thousands already here. They all have, let us say, as strong a motivation to vote as ever - and this is a close state.
Do you really think any of them were under the illusion that Trump gave a crap about Puerto Rico in 2016? DSeid is right, latino turnout is consistently worse than black or white turnout by a large margin. Puerto Rican origin people might be higher than the latino average but if calling them rapists and wanting to build a wall didn’t inspire Mexican Americans to up their voting turnout, I am not confident a crappy disaster response will affect Puerto Rican turnout.
Here’s an old Slate article discussing the riddle of why the island has good voter turnout but Puerto Ricans on the mainland do not:
Not really, but the motivation levels are somewhat different now post-Maria, wouldn’t you think?
If I was engaging in wishful thinking, yes. But realistically, I doubt it. I personally guess that latin Americans feel (or I should say more often feel than white and back Americans) that they are and/or considered outsiders of American society and that’s why they vote less. A poor disaster relief after Maria merely confirms that perception so why should it change their voting behaviour? How do you reconcile your thinking with the fact that calling Mexicans rapists didn’t jump start latino voting?