A few years ago, politicos who pay attention to the Puerto Rican vote in Florida noticed something interesting–the Puerto Rican population was a kind of “kingmaker” in statewide Florida elections. You didn’t necessarily need to win the Puerto Rican vote, but you had to be competitive. Failure to do so was consistently a marker of a losing campaign in Florida, going back to the mid 2000s. This was fully documented by the James Madison Institute (JMI), and that study was updated after the 2022 election cycle.
The 2024 election cycle is in the books, and the more deep dive numbers have started to trickle out. It’s no surprise to even casual observers that Florida has gone from tossup purple to deepest red over the course of this century. The land of hanging chads became MAGA country almost everywhere, and almost overnight.
The Puerto Rican vote in Florida has tracked similarly. In 2016, Donald Trump won just 26 percent (D+44) of the non-Cuban Hispanic vote in Florida, the best proxy we had back then for the Puerto Rican vote. By 2020, the question was updated to ask specifically about the Puerto Rican vote in Florida, and this time Trump had inched up his support to 31 percent (D+30). In 2024, the Democratic advantage among Puerto Ricans fell to D+13, with Trump carrying 44 percent of the Puerto Rican vote in Florida.
For those unaware of pollster/election jargon, the number after the “plus” sign is how much better Democrats did with Puerto Rican voters in Florida than Democrats did overall in Florida. Democrat nominee Kamala Harris won 43 percent of the vote in Florida, so Puerto Ricans voting D+13 means they gave her 56 percent of their vote.
The trend is clear–in three presidential cycles, support for Trump in the Puerto Rican community of Florida grew from 26 percent, to 31 percent, to 44 percent. That’s a very large swing in just eight calendar years. What is going on here?
Part of the answer is that Puerto Ricans in Florida are more conservative than estimated by most Republicans. The JMI study reports that Puerto Rican Floridians are 49-44 percent pro-life, and Florida’s “amendment 4” abortion referendum was on the ballot. Puerto Ricans in Florida are also more consistent weekly attendees at church. There’s reason to believe the Puerto Rican population is more pro-life than Florida voters are in general, since amendment 4 received 57 percent support in defeat (60 percent was necessary for passage).
According to sources cited in the JMI studies, 42 percent of Puerto Ricans in Florida describe themselves as “conservative.” That’s actually higher than the 37 percent of Florida adult voters who call themselves “conservative.”
Osceola County, which is 27 percent Puerto Rican, actually went red in 2024, choosing Trump 50-49.
Another aspect is the well-documented effect of Hispanic and Latino voters in general moving toward Trump on a combination of economic arguments and a rejection of the “Latinx” brand of ethnic fragmentation practiced by the national consultant class of Democratic Party operatives. Ruy Teixera was a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness on this, but until election night 2024 his message was still in doubt by many in the media and the party.
As the JMI study pointed out, being at least “respectfully agnostic” on the issue of Puerto Rican statehood also helps. Since 2016, Trump has pretty well stayed out of that fight, and even got Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) not to mention the “threat” of Puerto Rican statehood in his 2020 GOP convention speech. Most Puerto Ricans living in Florida are patriotic and don’t want to see statehood taken off the table as an option. Depending how the question is asked, Puerto Ricans living in Florida have recently supported statehood by 57, 66, or 77 percent.
While the Cubans in South Florida may be ahead of them, the Puerto Ricans of central Florida appear to be moving in the same direction as waves of “immigrant” communities before them. While Puerto Ricans are obviously not immigrants since they are American citizens, their voting patterns are similar to the Irish, Italians, Poles, and others who were. They remain fiercely loyal to their ethnic background (which takes the form of strong support for statehood). But as children are born in Florida, raise families, start businesses, purchase homes, attend college graduations, and maybe convert from Catholicism to evangelical Protestantism, they move in a more Republican direction. It remains to be seen if Republicans can flip Puerto Ricans in Florida from blue to purple to red. But doing so might unlock the biggest prize of all: bipartisan support for Puerto Rican statehood.
