By William Leogrande on November 1, 2024
graphic: Felix Azcuy
From the early 1980s until President Barack Obama announced his intention to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations ten years ago on December 17, 2014, Cuban-American voters in South Florida wielded a virtual veto over U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Organized and well-funded, the Cuban lobby could deliver a bloc of voters in a swing state who voted for or against a candidate based on his or her position on Cuba. Presidential candidates of both parties felt compelled to seek their support, or at least to avoid antagonizing them. However, that influence is waning.
Last week, the Center for Cuban Studies at Florida International University released the fifteenth in its series of surveys of Cuban Americans in South Florida, providing a valuable record of how this community’s opinion has evolved. It largely confirmed the results of recent FIU surveys. “There were no surprises,” said co-author Guillermo Grenier in his presentation of the results.
A majority of Cuban-American voters in South Florida identify as Republican, outnumbering registered Democrats by a three-to-one ratio, a gap that has grown since 2022. Fifty-nine percent describe themselves as conservative, and only 25 percent as liberal. While there are variations in attitudes based on the respondent’s age or when they came to the U.S. or were born in the country, these differences are not as pronounced as those found in previous FIU surveys.
From 1991 to 2016, the surveys showed a consistent trend. Deep anti-communist sympathies and vehement opposition to any rapprochement with Cuba gradually softened. As the generation of political refugees who left Cuba in the 1960s, when Fidel Castro declared a socialist revolution, gave way to a younger generation of newcomers and U.S. citizens of Cuban descent, polls showed a steady increase in support for selling food and medicine to Cuba, travel and sending remittances to the island, and even lifting the embargo.
Even the Cuban American National Foundation, the group most identified with a hard-line policy, moderated its positions to favor policies that would encourage family ties across the Florida Straits.
President Barack Obama recognized these changes and based his initial policy toward Cuba on family engagement, removing all restrictions on family travel and remittances. By the time he and Raul Castro announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, Obama could count on the support of half of the Cuban-American community.
But then the story took an unexpected turn. Donald Trump succeeded in revitalizing the Cuban-American right by promising to overthrow the Cuban government. He delivered on his promise with a policy of “maximum pressure,” applying the most intensive set of economic sanctions since the beginning of the embargo.
The first signs of change in the Cuban American community appeared in the 2018 FIU poll, which for the first time showed a reversal in engagement, with support for ending the embargo dropping below 50%. The Democratic share of registered Cuban American voters was also declining and, in the 2018 midterm elections, Cuban Americans preferred Republican candidates for governor, Senate and House by 70% to 30%.
However, this landslide Republican victory was not entirely due to Trump’s policies toward Cuba. In a list of top ten issues of concern mentioned in the FIU poll, Cuba ranked last. The top concerns were the economy, health care and gun control.
FIU’s 2020 and 2022 surveys confirmed what was anticipated in 2018. Support for the embargo rose to over 60%, but the Cuba issue was still relatively low on the list of priorities. Both polls showed that Cuban American support for Trump and dislike for Biden were not limited to a single issue, but extended across the full range of his policies.
In the 2020 poll, Trump’s job approval on a variety of issues never fell below 62%. In 2022, Biden’s approval on similar questions never exceeded 38%. Notably, 72% of respondents disapproved of Biden’s Cuba policy, although it did not differ much from Trump’s. In both polls, domestic issues topped respondents’ list of concerns, while Cuba policy ranked last of six issues in 2020 and sixth of nine in 2022.
FIU’s most recent survey underscores this new reality. Between 60% and 70% of Cuban Americans disapprove of all of Biden’s policies, from Cuba to Gaza, China, Russia and Ukraine. When asked, 68% said they would vote for Trump, rising to 94% among Republicans. However, Cuba policy again ranked sixth out of nine in importance. And, once again, the issues that most concern Cuban Americans are the same ones that concern all Americans: the economy, health care and immigration.
FIU’s four polls since 2018 have important implications for the domestic political calculations that have long dominated U.S. policy toward Cuba.
A solid majority of Cuban Americans identify as Republican and vote overwhelmingly along party lines, as do other partisan voters. Partisanship in Miami has become almost tribal, as it is in much of the United States. The Republican Party is seen as the party of Cuban Americans, just as the Democratic Party is seen as the party of African Americans.
A candidate’s position on Cuba is no longer the determining factor in the Cuban American vote. The importance of the Cuba issue has declined and now ranks low in comparison to domestic concerns. The issues that Cuban Americans consider important are the same ones that other voters cite.
The conventional wisdom among Democratic politicians has been that, if they mimicked the Republicans on the Cuba issue, other issues more favorable to Democrats would gain prominence and allow them to capture a larger share of the Cuban American electorate. Bill Clinton’s relative success among Cuban Americans in 1992 and 1996 seemed to confirm this strategy. However, as these issues have gained prominence, Cuban Americans have voted Republican anyway, as have other registered Republicans.
Still, if Florida were still a swing state, it would make sense for a Democratic candidate to try to win among this solidly Republican Cuban American community, just as both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are trying to capture small segments of their opponents’ electorates in states where the race will be decided by a razor-thin margin. However, Florida is no longer a swing state and Cuban Americans are not a swing electorate.
That is why neither Harris nor Trump have campaigned there and why Cuba has not been an issue in the campaign. Cuban Americans have become so loyal to Republicans that they have lost their influence with Democrats. The Democratic National Convention offered the most graphic evidence. While delegates from the swing states were right in front of the stage, the Florida contingent was relegated to the back of the room.
If Kamala Harris wins the election, she will not owe a political debt to Cuban Americans in Miami nor will she need to compromise her foreign policy toward Cuba to keep them satisfied. Of course, there are prominent Cuban American Democrats who deserve a place at the table because they can be valuable partners in shaping a Cuba policy that serves the U.S. national interest rather than the local interests of Little Havana.
But most Cuban Americans have already chosen sides and, as President Obama said, elections have consequences.
Source: Responsible Statecraft