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Tens-of-thousands of Puerto Ricans move to FL permanently making FL lean Democratic?

K

KSweeley

Member
That's what WaPo is reporting this morning (September 28) in an email that they send out each morning about politics that it's expected that due to the current conditions in Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of people who live in Puerto Rico will be moving to Florida permanently and it could flip Florida to lean Democratic and might have an impact on the upcoming 2018 midterm election: https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=a3Muc3dlZWxleUBnbWFpbC5jb20=&s=59ccdbe6fe1ff635a7642eb9

THE BIG IDEA: More than 50 million ballots were cast by Floridians in the seven presidential elections from 1992 through 2016. If you add them all up, only 18,000 votes separate the Republicans from the Democrats. That is 0.04 percent.

Florida is rightfully considered the swingiest of swing states. Control of the White House in 2000 came down to a few hundred hanging chads – and one vote on the Supreme Court. The past four statewide elections – two governor's races and two presidentials – were all decided by a single percentage point.

So it could be quite politically significant that tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, maybe more, are expected to permanently move into Florida as the result of Hurricane Maria. The Category 4 storm has wreaked havoc on the U.S. territory of 3.4 million. Most of the island still doesn't have power a week after Maria made landfall. There are shortages of fuel, medicine, food and running water. Infrastructure that was already crumbling is in ruins.

Puerto Ricans are American citizens, thanks to a law passed in 1917. As a result, all they need to settle in the mainland is a plane ticket or a berth on a boat.

Their citizenship entitles them to vote, and they tend to overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates.

Florida-based Republican operative Rick Wilson thinks the hurricane might be a game changer. ”If you put an influx of 100,000 Puerto Ricans who vote Democratic eight times out of 10 in the Orlando area, there you go," he said. ”Nobody can afford a big change in the registration pattern or a change in the voting pattern that offsets Florida's narrowness. You could end up with a big advantage for Democrats in 2018 if they play it right. The Puerto Ricans would be coming here because they feel like Donald Trump left them high and dry. That won't fade away. ... It could be a very, very big deal."

Hurricane Katrina had an impact on Texas politics because almost half a million people, mostly African Americans, relocated there from the New Orleans area. ”It made Louisiana more red and Texas a bit more blue," said Wilson, who has long been critical of Trump. ”Texas could absorb it."

The number of people of Puerto Rican origin living in Florida already surpassed 1 million in 2015, which is more than double what it was in 2000. Cuban Americans now represent less than one-third of Florida's eligible Hispanic voters.
Click to expand...
 
Jag

Jag

Member
Welp. Traffic already sucks. Hurricanes do have a tendency to move people though. Lots of people from Miami moved a bit north after Andrew.
 
K

Kill Your Masters

Member
Climate change migration that costs republicans their seats will finally concinve them that the threat is real.

just kidding, they'd rather kill us all than change their beliefs
 
K

kess

Member
Would be a repeat of the fallout from the 1928 Mississippi flood if true. The GOP never recovered from that.

The stories I'm hearing from PR are insane.
 
K

KSweeley

Member
kess said:
Would be a repeat of the fallout from the 1928 Mississippi flood if true. The GOP never recovered from that.

The stories I'm hearing from PR are insane.
Click to expand...

I honestly believe that Puerto Rico will be seen as a significant humanitarian disaster/crisis of the 21st Century. These significant humanitarian disasters/crisis will only increase in the near future as scientists are predicting extreme weather events becoming more common due to climate change. Climate change is already irreversibly warming the oceans causing stronger tropical cyclones that are forming outside of the current scientifically defined tropical cyclone season both before and after the season itself. Category 5 hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific are likely to become more commonplace as the oceans warm even further.
 
B

Barzul

Member
jfkgoblue said:
I don’t get this? Trump won Florida by over 130,000 votes, how does ten thousand make it a “democratic lean”?
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Not all of those 130k will come out and vote again, some can be flipped etc. Also Puerto Rican’s help provide even more buffer. That’s the thinking anyways .
 
F

FreezeSSC

Member
I remember reading an article about the 2016 elections sayings Puerto Ricans were moving in droves because of their state declaring bankruptcy, and that it would tilt the state more blue... Well that didnt happen but I'd love for them to get it right for once.
 
Y

yuoke

Banned
CyclopsRock said:
The events discussed in this article either will happen or they won't happen, whether you think about them or not. So why not think about them?
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Wouldn't it be better to talk it about it if it really starts happening? Right now it's still a crisis and politics shouldn't be a factor.
 
J

jfkgoblue

Member
Barzul said:
Not all of those 130k will come out and vote again, some can be flipped etc. Also Puerto Rican’s help provide even more buffer. That’s the thinking anyways .
Click to expand...
Ok then say it makes it easier, not the clickbait that Florida is now a “Democratic lean”(not aiming at you more at the author of the article)
 
J

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
Come to Oklahoma, please. It's cheap as fuck but we're so red we need help.
 
K

Kusagari

Member
FreezeSSC said:
I remember reading an article about the 2016 elections sayings Puerto Ricans were moving in droves because of their state declaring bankruptcy, and that it would tilt the state more blue... Well that didnt happen but I'd love for them to get it right for once.
Click to expand...

Florida in 2016 was just bizarre in general. Hillary got almost 300k more votes than Obama did in 2012, which, going off logical thinking and results in most other swing states in the country, should have led to her easily winning. Instead, Trump got 500k more votes than Romney and turned out thousands upon thousands in rural areas who never voted normally.
 
T

tbm24

Member
Given that there are pictures now of containers sitting at ports with supplies and the mayor of San Juan is powerless to do anything about them, they definitely wont forget how the GOP fucked them.
 
K

KSweeley

Member
jfkgoblue said:
Still doesn’t make it a “democratic lean”

Like I said Trump won by 130,000, Rubio by over half a million, it is ridiculous to say that it makes the state lean blue.
Click to expand...

And that's why in the topic title, I put a question mark after "making FL lean Democratic" because it's unclear if enough Puerto Ricans would actually move to Florida permanently in large enough numbers to have Florida lean Democratic.
 
M

moffattron9000

Member
I mean, this has been happening all across the Sun Belt. Georgia and Arizona have slowly crept into the swing state column, with Texas being that bomb waiting in the corner. North Carolina is quickly supplanting Ohio as THE swing state. Nevada is probably locked in as a Democratic state at this point. If we want to expand our reach a bit, we see that Colorado and Virginia are probably are too.
 
A

Abstrusity

Member
I mean, it could, but we really need to cut it out with the fucking tourists from lesser states coming down here with their fucked up drugs and eating peoples' faces, stabbing people with squirrels, beating people to death with the rock hard publix sub rolls, I mean

it's a mess, Florida gets a bad rap.

We need to build a wall, and make Vermont/Wisconsin/Missouri/Indiana pay for it.
 
R

Ryuuroden

Member
moffattron9000 said:
I mean, this has been happening all across the Sun Belt. Georgia and Arizona have slowly crept into the swing state column, with Texas being that bomb waiting in the corner. North Carolina is quickly supplanting Ohio as THE swing state. Nevada is probably locked in as a Democratic state at this point. If we want to expand our reach a bit, we see that Colorado and Virginia are probably are too.
Click to expand...

I think Colorado and Virginia lean more dem than Nevada. Nevada just has a damn good democratic political machine that punches above its weight.
 
Sakura

Sakura

Member
The number of people of Puerto Rican origin living in Florida already surpassed 1 million in 2015, which is more than double what it was in 2000.
Click to expand...
So the number of Puerto Ricans, who overwhelmingly vote democrat, increased by over 500 thousand and yet the state still went Republican last election. Yet this increase of some tens of thousands, will make Florida lean Democrat? It's not like the Puerto Rican population is the only population increasing in Florida, nor is the turn out rate 100%. I don't think it will have a huge impact.
That being said I'd be surprised if Florida went Republican next election given the Trump presidency.
 
J

jfkgoblue

Member
KSweeley said:
And that's why in the topic title, I put a question mark after "making FL lean Democratic" because it's unclear if enough Puerto Ricans would actually move to Florida permanently in large enough numbers to have Florida lean Democratic.
Click to expand...
Well then, the answer is no
 
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