{"id":230127,"date":"2020-11-08T09:23:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T14:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=230127"},"modified":"2021-04-26T15:01:47","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T19:01:47","slug":"cuban-americans-and-the-2020-presidential-election-evidence-and-hypotheses-from-the-2020-cuba-poll-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba-usa\/cuban-americans-and-the-2020-presidential-election-evidence-and-hypotheses-from-the-2020-cuba-poll-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuban-Americans and the 2020 Presidential Election: Evidence and Hypotheses from the 2020 Cuba Poll (I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every four years Cuban-Americans in Miami become \u201clos bravos de la pelicula.\u201d Heroes of a movie running since the Cold War year with little updating. Politicians and their posses descend on South Florida talking tough about Cuba and make promises about what they will do about its deviant government. It is as if Cubans care about nothing else other than US\/Cuba policy and they only care about this every four years. Cuban-Americans play their role well and predictably. After some tension about whether generational shifts or the rising new waves of immigrants will change the political calculus, the hardliners reassert their domination. The cries for a \u201cCuba Libre\u201d echo off the class walls of the Versailles restaurant. The Republican Party triumphs. The Democrats say \u2018it is what it is.\u2019 The end. To be continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

For close to thirty of those long years I have conducted the FIU Cuba Poll, usually during these periods when everyone wants to know how Cubans are going to vote. Our poll tries to understand the attitudes of Cuban-Americans about U.S.\/Cuba relations and other ancillary policies linking the South Florida diaspora to the motherland. The tension between supporting policies of engagement or policies of isolation is always present. The desire to see change on the island, and to be players in that change, is palpable. Some want help from the almighty U.S. government to promote political changes. Other want to be catalysts for micro economic changes, starting with their families. Some want both.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Certain long-established patterns maintained themselves in the latest poll, released on October 2. The desire for engagement is alive in the community but is frustrated by a lack of clear policies allowing for its expression. A majority of Cuban-Americans support policies that facilitate the selling of food and medicine to the Cuban people (69% and 74% respectively), maintaining diplomatic relations with the Cuban government (58%) and promoting strategies designed to improve the economic well-being of the Cuban people (78%).\u00a0 Over 70% of Cuban-Americans in South Florida have family on the island, so the interest in maintaining ties is hardwired, particularly among the most recent arrivals. Over 50% percent travel to the island and 48% send remittances to keep these ties alive and a large majority (65%) would like the airline industry to open routes to all parts of the island, not just Havana. Perhaps the question which most reveals the sensitivities of the community deals with the humanitarian crisis thrust upon us all by the Covid-19 pandemic. The community overwhelmingly supported, by 60%, a temporary suspension of the sanctions imposed by the nearly sixty-year-old embargo to help Cubans deal with the humanitarian crisis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All of these behaviors and opinions provide evidence of a real desire to keep bridges open between the south Florida diaspora and the island and a craving to be involved in the improvement of conditions on the island. Yet, the community has become more intransigent, and more Republican since the election of Donald Trump. In spite of the desire to suspend sanctions during the pandemic, support for the embargo, after plummeting to 34% during Obama\u2019s second term, is today 60% among Cuban-Americans in South Florida. This is the highest support level since the Bush years. Also for the first time since the Bush years, support for allowing regular travel for all Americans to Cuba declined below 50%. Isolationism is trending in the community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Support for the Republican party, a party that holds steady in its isolationist approach towards Cuba policy, has been on an upswing since the election of Trump. In a survey of Cuban-Americans released two days after the 2020 FIU Cuba Poll, the PEW Research Center reported that 58% of Cuban Americans nation-wide are registered or lean Republican. Our poll reported a resurgence of the Party among Cuban-Americans, now representing 53% of registered voters after years of weakening during the Obama administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we reconcile this isolationist political profile of Cuban-Americans with a seemingly profound desire to stay connected to friends and relatives? At least two dynamics are at work in creating this apparent contradiction 1) the importance of the rules of engagement established by the leadership in Washington and 2) the pervasive presence of the Republican Party in the Cuban-American community.<\/span><\/p>\n

El voto cubanoamericano en las elecciones de EE UU (+Video)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n