By PRFSU Writers 2023-2024 Andrew Parker
On November 8, 2022, Ron DeSantis won re-election as Florida’s 46th governor. He defeated former Governor Charlie Crist by 19.4 percent and 1.5 million votes. According to the raw vote totals, his outright victory in Miami-Dade County by 11.3 percent and 80,596 votes led to the landslide win. Strikingly, in the 2018 gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum beat the now-governor by 20 percentage points there.
Before the 2022 midterms, Senator Marco Rubio was the last Republican to win the county in a statewide race and his win came 12 years ago. A factor in the victory in Miami-Dade and across the state of Florida comes from DeSantis’s surging popularity among Cuban-Americans. Cuban immigration has benefitted the Florida GOP’s electoral dominance in the state.
As of 2020, the Pew Research Center found that 58% of Cuban registered voters nationwide identified with the Republican Party, whereas only 32% of non-Cuban Hispanics identified as members of the party. A divide of that magnitude would give Republican candidates an edge in any state with a significant Cuban American population, and roughly five percent of Florida’s population of 20 million people is Cuban American.
Republican candidates have in recent years linked big government, Medicare for All, and a more lenient policy toward undocumented immigrants to the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. They argue that this is where the mainstream values of the modern Democratic Party lie. It is an effort to link the buzzword “socialism” with Democratic candidates. Many Cubans in Florida escaped Castro’s communist regime and Republicans contend Castro’s policies will be enacted in the United States if Democrats have power.
It seems to have worked for the party in Florida because as of 2022, 52% of registered Cuban-American voters in South Florida are Republican. This number is from the 2022 FIU Cuba Poll which has tracked the politics of Cuban Americans in South Florida for 30 years.
This becomes all the more interesting as a potential battle appears to be brewing in the 2024 Republican primary as former President Donald Trump has already declared his 2024 candidacy and there is media speculation that Governor DeSantis will do the same later this year. If they do go head-to-head, Republican primary voters in Florida will have a unique role in determining the party’s nominee. Their choice would be between a former president who lives in their state, the current governor of their state, and any other challengers.
Governor DeSantis and former President Trump will likely both look to South Florida and the Cuban-American population for critical support. According to exit polls by major media organizations, Governor DeSantis won 57% of the Cuban vote in his 2022 re-election bid. He beat former Governor Charlie Crist by 15 points in that category of voters. In 2016, 54 percent of Cubans in Florida voted for Donald Trump helping him win the state.
While it is hard to presume how exactly the Republican nomination will shake out, the backing among Cuban American voters in South Florida and across the state for Republican candidates is a bad sign for Democratic hopes of a major win in Florida in future elections. The last couple of years of associating the priorities of the Democratic Party with the policies of the Castro regime in Cuba has worked for Republicans in the state. Across the country, however, exit polls showed that only 40% of Latinos nationwide supported Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.
Unlike other communities in the immigration debate, Cubans in Florida have come to support conservative candidates. This voting bloc in South Florida has become a voting force for the Republican Party. Florida was once the swingiest of swing states, but the Cuban population in South Florida has potentially turned the sunshine state into a reliably red state.
References
Anderson, Z., & Bustos, S. (2022, November 9). Florida exit polls: DeSantis won Hispanics and just about every other key group. Tallahassee Democrat. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/11/09/ron-desantis-better-among-florida-hispanics-than-donald-trump/8316662001/
Florida governor election results 2018: Live midterm map by county & analysis. POLITICO. (2018, November 7). Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/florida/governor/
Florida governor election results 2022: Live map: Midterm races by County. POLITICO. (2023, February 2). Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/florida/statewide-offices/
Krogstad, J. M. (2021, April 28). Most Cuban American voters identify as Republican in 2020. Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/02/most-cuban-american-voters-identify-as-republican-in-2020/
Krogstad, J. M., & Flores, A. (2020, August 27). Unlike other Latinos, about half of Cuban voters in Florida backed Trump. Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/15/unlike-other-latinos-about-half-of-cuban-voters-in-florida-backed-trump/
Reimann, N. (2022, November 10). Miami-Dade goes red: GOP scores massive midterm election wins in once-Democratic stronghold. Forbes. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/08/miami-dade-goes-red-gop-scores-massive-wins-in-once-democratic-stronghold/?sh=c6d3ac7694a1
Team, C. B. S. M. (2022, October 25). Majority of South Florida Cubans in GOP want Trump to run again, dislike Biden’s handling of Economy, Global Affairs, FIU Cuba Poll finds. CBS News. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/majority-of-south-florida-cubans-in-gop-want-trump-to-run-again-dislike-bidens-handling-of-economy-global-affairs-fiu-cuba-poll-finds/
Vilcarino, J., & Harrison, C. (2022, November 17). Chart: How U.S. Latinos voted in the 2022 midterm election. AS/COA. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-how-us-latinos-voted-2022-midterm-election