ORLANDO, Fla. – Researchers at UCF’s Puerto Rico Research Hub wanted the clearest picture yet 15 days from the General Election of who Central Florida’s Puerto Ricans are voting for and why.
They posted their poll on social media seeking opinions from 150 local Puerto Ricans.
Osceola County is majority Hispanic, dominated by Puerto Ricans and one of the largest Puerto Rican communities in the state.
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At first the response to the poll was slow until a comedian took aim at the island nation during former President Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York City last Sunday.
“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” comedian Tony Hincliffe told the crowd. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Immediately after, researchers saw a spike in poll respondents. Soon after, the poll was closed when it received 150 responses.
The Trump campaign said it vetted the comedian’s comments and the reference to Puerto Rico was unscripted and off-the-cuff.
UCF Puerto Rico Research Hub director Dr. Fernando Rivera said the comment knocked 10% of the undecided local Puerto Rican voters off the fence.
In addition, 85% of respondents now say they will or did vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Fortunately, or unfortunately, Puerto Rico became a topic last week after the unfortunate comments that were made about Puerto Rico as an island of garbage,” Rivera said. “In ways of viewing this, sort of kind of like analyzing some of these issues, this might have had two impacts, and obviously we’re going to know in the election. But in my head, I had the impact as maybe, you know, those were still Trump-curious, you know, that maybe this guy is saying the right thing. And this Kamala Harris person? I don’t know that much. Maybe I could, you know, support this person right now. But after those comments, everybody came forward to defending Puerto Rico, right. So it really touched a very sensitive topic for Puerto Ricans out there. And we saw sort of the ramifications of that.”
Dr. Sara Belligoni, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Puerto Rico Research Hub, said the shift is a “potential October surprise when it comes to Puerto Rican voting.”
“Because before the Madison Square Garden rally, we collected some information, some respondents already were kind of like [slowly] responding to our survey,” Belligoni said. “But what happened is what we have seen on Monday we saw a spike from 28, 30 responses, it went up to the 150 that we ended up collecting in less than a week. And all of a sudden it became an issue out here. So it kind of like brought sort of an importance out there that they haven’t had before out here.”
In 2020, Osceola County voters overwhelmingly picked President Biden over former President Trump, 56% to 43%.
But then two years later, Republican Ron DeSantis swung the solid Democratic county to his side, winning Osceola and his re-election as governor.
Election analysts blamed low voter turnout in 2022 but Belligoni and Rivera said that won’t happen this time.
97% percent of the Puerto Ricans who responded to the poll said they are voting in this election.
The UCF researchers said their most recent poll also revealed the changing Puerto Rican priorities, even from their previous poll early this year.
Priorities used to be education, cost of living and the economy. Now, besides education, health care and abortion top that list, in part because the demographic of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida is changing, Belligoni and Rivera said. The community continues to grow and has gotten younger.
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