Voter/Consumer Research polled registered voters of Puerto Rican descent living along the I-4 Corridor around Orlando, the hub of Florida’s large and growing Puerto Rican population.
The poll found that 64 percent of registered voters back statehood as a resolution of the island’s political status.
The poll found that Puerto Rico statehood is an issue respondents consider when heading to the ballot box.
“The Puerto Rican vote has become decisive in state and federal races across Florida. Certainly presidential and statewide candidates cannot win without the Puerto Rican vote,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive Director of the American Principles in Action’s Latino Partnership. “It is time for us to decide what should be done regarding Puerto Rico statehood, and the outcome of this decision could determine the Florida vote in 2016.”
There are almost 900,000 Puerto Ricans in Florida, which has replaced New York as the primary destination for Puerto Ricans coming to the U.S. mainland, with the biggest influx centered along the I-4 Corridor. The spiking Puerto Rican population is reshaping the political map in the key battleground state.
At the local level, most elected Puerto Ricans in Florida are Republicans.
Political pundits say presidential hopefuls and other campaigners would be wise to pay more attention to wooing voters along the I-4 Corridor, and spend less time in the Cuban hub of Miami.
Cubans, long considered the political powerhouse of the Florida Hispanic vote, account for 36 percent of Florida’s Hispanic votes. However, at current growth rates, there could be more Puerto Rican voters in the Sunshine State by the middle of the decade.
And unlike Puerto Rican blocs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut that are seen as safely Democratic, Boricua voters in Florida are up for grabs, in part due to demographic differences from longtime hubs further up the U.S. East Coast.
Many first-time Puerto Rican voters in Florida are college-educated and middle-class professionals who have fled the island’s marathon recession. Democrats can’t take votes for granted in a bloc that in many cases is more politically, socially and economically conservative than other stateside Puerto Rican populations.
The Puerto Rican population in Florida surged 75 percent over the last decade and now account for nearly one-third of the state’s Hispanic voters. Many among the new arrivals maintain close ties to Puerto Rico and a certain amount of movement back and forth between Florida and the island is common.
The flood of Puerto Ricans to Florida — an estimated 350,000 islanders have moved there in recent years — has swelled the Sunshine State’s total Puerto Rican population to more than 850,000 and shows no signs of slowing.
Census figures show that Central Florida’s Puerto Rican population ballooned to 482,000 between 2000 and 2010, and that number has only gone up since. Puerto Ricans make up at least 27 percent of the population in Osceola County and 13 percent in Orange County.
Puerto Ricans make up the second largest Hispanic group behind Cubans in Florida.
There are now five million Puerto Ricans living in the mainland U.S., based on the projected rate of growth between 2011 and 2013.
In comparison, the island’s population has fallen 3.6 million. Puerto Rico’s population has been declining in recent years due to several factors, such as the ongoing recession dating back nearly a decade.
The data means that stateside Puerto Ricans now outnumber those on the island by at least 1.3 million.
Puerto Ricans are the second-largest Latino population group stateside, with nearly one out of every 10 U.S. Hispanics tracing their heritage back to this Caribbean island. Mexicans are the largest group, with 33.5 million residing stateside, comprising 64.6 percent of all U.S. Hispanics.
Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla has pledged to hold another plebiscite before the end of the political term in 2016, moving away from plans to convene a constituent assembly on the issue. Puerto Ricans living on the mainland have not been allowed to vote in previous local plebiscites.
His Popular Democratic Party’s push for an enhanced commonwealth status was dealt a blow in Congress last year when ranking Democratic and Republican members of the U.S. Senate dismissed it as option to resolve Puerto Rico’s status dilemma, signaling it wouldn’t pass the U.S. Department of Justice’s constitutional litmus test.
The governor’s announcement in July came more than a year after President Barack Obama presented a $3.77 trillion budget proposal for 2014 that includes $2.5 million for voter education and the first federally sanctioned plebiscite in Puerto Rico on options that would resolve the fundamental question of the island’s future political status. Congress approved the funding in January.
The $2.5 million is to be funneled through the U.S. Department of Justice to the Puerto Rico State Elections Commission. The monies could be used after the attorney general has found a commission plan that includes education materials and ballot options to be consistent with the Constitution and basic laws and policies of the United States.
The commission would have equal representation from each of Puerto Rico’s political parties, with a president appointed by the governor. For a status plebiscite under local law last November, the membership was increased to include representatives of each of status option.
Although the federal law approved by Congress and signed by Obama does not prescribe how the ballot should be structured, it does require the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that any option on the ballot is compatible with the U.S. Constitution, its laws and its public policy.
The plebiscite would be the first federal sanctioned status vote but would be the second referendum within a four-year period. The previous was held on election day in November 2012.
In the first question of the November 2012 two-part referendum, 54 percent of voters said they were not content with the current commonwealth status.
The second question asked what status was preferred. Of the about 1.3 million voters who made a choice, nearly 800,000 supported statehood, some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose independence. But nearly 500,000 left that question blank.
The White House has said “the results were clear, the people of Puerto Rico want the issue of status resolved, and a majority chose statehood in the second question.”
“Now is the time for Congress to act and the administration will work with them on that effort so that the people of Puerto Rico can determine their own future,” reads a statement by the White House issued in early December 2012.
The Puerto Rican Independence Party and statehood NPP maintain that the results of the two-step plebiscite represent a clear rejection of the continuation of the current territorial status. Those voting “no” included statehood supporters, as well as advocates of independence and free association.
García Padilla and his PDP argue the ballot was rigged against the current status and that the empty ballots represent a protest against commonwealth’s exclusion from the second question. He had pledged to hold a constituent assembly on the status issue in 2014 if a congressionally binding plebiscite was not held.
A similar appropriation was proposed by then President Bill Clinton in 2000 and enacted into law by the Republican Congress in 2000 for a Puerto Rican status choice in 2001. (It was not spent because the funds lapsed before a plan was developed.)
In a March 2011 report, the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status found that the island’s development needs were hindered by lack of resolution of the ultimate status question. The issue also raises questions about the appropriate federal policies related to Puerto Rico.
The task force also advised, as it did under President George W. Bush, that Puerto Ricans should vote to determine their aspirations among the possible options for Puerto Rico’s status. It identified the possible options as: commonwealth (under which islands exercise local self-government but are subject to broad congressional governing authority under the Territory Clause of the Constitution, may be treated differently than states in federal laws, and do not have voting representation in the federal government; U.S. statehood; Independence, nationhood in a free association with the U.S. (similar to the arrangements that the U.S. has with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau in the Pacific).
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