the mystery of the cuban vote

[jman123]

Cubans have historically been huge Republicans.  This thing that they swung for Obama in Miami Dade probably contributed to his win in Florida statewide.

  Don't they have an abhorrence for left leaning politics? 

[Siloch]

Romney won the Cuban vote, the swing was probably due to Ryan's support of lifting the US embargo on Cuba.

[BaldEagle1991]

A significant number of Cuban Americans fled Cuba from the left-leaning Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

[Badger]

Younger Cuban voters are MUCH more swing voters than their parents and ggrandparents. The % of Cubans who vote over Cold War issues diminishes markedly each election cycle. Most younger Cubans I warrant support lifting the embargo for a variety of humantarian and pragmatic reasons.

[Napoleon]

The Republicans have made it clear enough that they are going the arch-nativist route.

[mileslunn]

Its due to age differences.  Older Cubans are voting just as heavily Republican as they always have been, but younger Cubans are not following their parent's voting patterns and thus the gains the Democrats make every election cycle is most Cuban-Americans who die are Republicans and most who weren't old enough in the previous election cycle, but are this time around vote Democrat.

[minionofmidas]

The Republicans have made it clear enough that they are going the arch-nativist route.

Exactly. "No one asks to see my birth certificate!", "self-deport" etc sent the clearest possible message that non-white immigrant communities' votes are not welcome.

It has an equivalent of sorts in the "war on coal", by the way.

[BaldEagle1991]

Younger Cuban voters are MUCH more swing voters than their parents and ggrandparents. The % of Cubans who vote over Cold War issues diminishes markedly each election cycle. Most younger Cubans I warrant support lifting the embargo for a variety of humantarian and pragmatic reasons.

Yeah. Many Cuban-Americans born after 1980 tend to vote like other Hispanics across the nation. Obama lifting travel bans for all Cuban-Americans tended to help with them as well.

[Siloch]

The Republicans have made it clear enough that they are going the arch-nativist route.

Exactly. "No one asks to see my birth certificate!", "self-deport" etc sent the clearest possible message that non-white immigrant communities' votes are not welcome.

It has an equivalent of sorts in the "war on coal", by the way.

Just one little flaw in your imaginary "big bad GOP racists" theory, most Cuban-Americans are white.

[minionofmidas]

Dude, I know that. It fails to matter much.

[Stranger in a strange land]

The Republicans have made it clear enough that they are going the arch-nativist route.

Exactly. "No one asks to see my birth certificate!", "self-deport" etc sent the clearest possible message that non-white immigrant communities' votes are not welcome.

It has an equivalent of sorts in the "war on coal", by the way.

Just one little flaw in your imaginary "big bad GOP racists" theory, most Cuban-Americans are white.

That's true by any reasonable standard, but race in America is very weird in this regard.

[minionofmidas]

It's not as Barack Obama was an American Black either... or a descendant of illegal immigrants.

[CountryClassSF]

There were lots of interesting tidbits about the election that need to be talked about to analyze what went wrong for Romney in the Cuban vote.

The problem is, the Romney team has been so tight-lipped about why exactly they felt "their data" was correct while nearly a year's worth of public polling contradicted their turnout model.

Why the campaign never atleast raised an eyebrow over the consistency of the public polling vs. their private data, we'll never know.

That being said --- part of something I noticed is that Romney's campaign stuck with the same individual message---"Economy, economy, economy" and did not tailor the message to specific demographics.  So, unlike the Obama people, there was really no attempt to reach out to the conservative base (which includes many Cuban American voters).

Objectively, Romney should have wiped the floor with his opponents in the primary due to an almost 5-1 financial advantage. The major reason why he did not was that he was not well liked among his base.  The assumption they made was that "the base" will just come out anyway because of dislike of Obama, but as we saw with Kerry v Bush most recently, that strategy just doesn't work anymore in the 21st century.


Romney lost ground among Cubans because they made a stupid assumption that the vote would just come naturally.  You have to turnout your base, or you just can't win. Same goes for the millions of white conservative Americans that stayed home.

[fezzyfestoon]

Interestingly, New Jersey Cubans are far more Democratic than average, especially compared to their Florida counterparts. Hudson County has some of the most Democratic/Cuban areas in the entire country.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Interestingly, New Jersey Cubans are far more Democratic than average, especially compared to their Florida counterparts. Hudson County has some of the most Democratic/Cuban areas in the entire country.

Proud Union Cityan!

The answer is twofold. The original Cuban exiles, who voted overwhelmingly Republican, are literally dying. Secondly, younger Cubans are shifting Democratic for the same reasons as other Latinos.