Call it the Cuban Conundrum — a problem for pollsters who find Florida Hispanics are far more Republican than anywhere else in the nation.
It’s on full display in the latest Florida International University/Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll of likely Hispanic Florida voters showing President Barack Obama clings to a narrow 51-47 percent lead over Republican Mitt Romney.
But nationwide, the poll shows, Obama leads by a far bigger margin among likely Hispanic voters.
The difference in Florida: Cuban voters. Without them, the FIU poll shows, Obama would handily win likely Florida Hispanic voters 65-32 percent.
Not only are Cubans reliable Republican voters — they’re about 70 percent of Miami-Dade’s registered Republicans — but they’re also more likely to answer surveys like the FIU poll.
“Cuban-American voters pick up the phone and answer. They want to be heard,” said Eduardo Gamarra, an FIU professor of Latin American studies who conducted the poll with his political research firm, the Newlink Group.
It’s on full display in the latest Florida International University/Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll of likely Hispanic Florida voters showing President Barack Obama clings to a narrow 51-47 percent lead over Republican Mitt Romney.
But nationwide, the poll shows, Obama leads by a far bigger margin among likely Hispanic voters.
The difference in Florida: Cuban voters. Without them, the FIU poll shows, Obama would handily win likely Florida Hispanic voters 65-32 percent.
Not only are Cubans reliable Republican voters — they’re about 70 percent of Miami-Dade’s registered Republicans — but they’re also more likely to answer surveys like the FIU poll.
“Cuban-American voters pick up the phone and answer. They want to be heard,” said Eduardo Gamarra, an FIU professor of Latin American studies who conducted the poll with his political research firm, the Newlink Group.
The sheer response rate and strong backing for Romney among voters of Cuban ancestry has cropped up in other Florida polls. Together, the polls could be detecting an unrivaled intensity for the Republican ticket that could help keep Obama from a second Florida win — and therefore a second-term in the White House.
Gamarra, a registered Democrat of Bolivian descent, actually had to scale back the number of Cuban-American respondents in the poll, a process known as “weighting,” which he prefers not to do.
Gamarra stopped polling in South Florida all together when he concluded the three-day survey last week in order to reach other Hispanics — those of Puerto Rican, Mexican and South and Central-American ancestry.
“Polling Florida Hispanics is extremely difficult,” Gamarra said. “It’s not just a Cuban conundrum, but it’s a Florida and Miami-Dade conundrum.”
Gamarra, a registered Democrat of Bolivian descent, actually had to scale back the number of Cuban-American respondents in the poll, a process known as “weighting,” which he prefers not to do.
Gamarra stopped polling in South Florida all together when he concluded the three-day survey last week in order to reach other Hispanics — those of Puerto Rican, Mexican and South and Central-American ancestry.
“Polling Florida Hispanics is extremely difficult,” Gamarra said. “It’s not just a Cuban conundrum, but it’s a Florida and Miami-Dade conundrum.”
And that Cuban Republican majority, duped by years of Republican false promises and lies and self-serving C-A political power elites and media, time after time in every election, votes against their own self interest and a rational Cuban foreign policy that might have resolved that issue many years ago. Poor fools. They can thank the rest of us for saving them from themselves.
Posted by: Lorenzo Ruiz | October 30, 2012 at 10:48 PM
no surprise the CRAZY CUBANS are voting Republican.
These CHUCKLEHEADS would vote for FIDEL himself if he had an R next to his name on the ballot.
Can you say STUPID!
Please take the boats back to the island. They are waiting for you at the docks right now!
Posted by: joe blow | October 31, 2012 at 08:05 AM