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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Open Thread: Viva Puerto Rico!

Open Thread: Viva Puerto Rico!

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The Republican Party forced Donald Trump on the rest of us; now it looks like he’ll destroy the Republican Party in return…

In the wish lists of Democratic strategists, one imagines the arrival of tens of thousands of Democratic-leaning voters to Florida, seemingly overnight, ranks pretty high.

Two months after Hurricane Maria made landfall on the island, new data suggests that’s exactly what’s happened.

Figures on school enrollment provided to CNN from the Florida Department of Education suggest that well over 50,000 Puerto Ricans will have moved to Florida and made it their residence heading into the midterm election next year.

These voters are likely to be strong Democrat supporters, as an analysis by Dan Smith, a University of Florida professor, found that heavily-Puerto Rican districts only gave 15 to 35% support to Trump…

“The demographic change to Florida has the potential to affect Federal and state elections,” said Michael McDonald, professor of political science at the University of Florida, who maintains the United States Election Project. When the 2020 Census is released, continued population growth in the areas where Puerto Ricans live will likely mean more districts at the state and Congressional levels are drawn favorably for Democrats, he added.

Several news articles show that already more than 150,000 people have moved to Florida from Puerto Rico. But those figures are likely too high, say experts following the migration. Numbers in that range are often provided by the Florida Division of Emergency Management but only count travel through Florida airports from Puerto Rico. They do not show the number of people who have moved to Florida and settled there, which is more important to understanding who will vote there…

Texas is getting a lot of migrants from the island, too.

Of course I’d much rather all these people didn’t have to suffer needlessly because the current Oval Office occupant is a selfish prick. But organizing desperate voters to get what they need from an unresponsive government is one of the Democratic Party’s best skill sets…

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  2. 2.

    frosty

    A perfect rotating tag line: “F*ckem”. Trump’s attitude toward PR, PR’s attitude toward Trump. Thank you efg and thanks to the FP’er who added it.

  3. 3.

    lamh36

    FINALLY putting 2 & 2 together!

    I’ve been on this since the beginning

    1977 is when three of Roy Moore’s accusers say he propositioned or assaulted them as teenagers. It is also the year, *by his own description*, he first noticed, at a dance recital, the pretty girl who would later become his wife.

    He was 30. She was 16.
    https://twitter.com/orrchris/status/932805762140733442

  5. 5.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @lamh36:
    Funny how none of this is sinking Congressional Repubs yet. Not to say what is alleged against Conyers didn’t happen, but you can’t tell me male Republican politicians are cleaner than Democrats, especially when it comes to sexual harassment.

  10. 10.

    Emerald

    Was pretty sure that Florida would get lots of new voters from PR. Was hoping that Texas would get them too, because that really will stick it to the Rs.

    Kiss the presidency goodbye. They can’t win without Florida, and if they lose Texas too, Hooyah!

    Of course they’ll double down on the voter suppression, but I think that’s a topic Tom Perez has on his radar.

  11. 11.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @lamh36:

    “pro-president supporter”

    Is that the new codeword for “mindless unAmerican fascist”?

    The best part?:

    “If you continue to make threats toward the president, you’re going to wind up dead, Maxine, ’cause we’ll kill you,” Lloyd said. He later told investigators he had no intention of actually harming the congresswoman.

    Actually I can believe that. Too cowardly. Lloyd would be shot by Capitol police before he got a round off.

  13. 13.

    StringOnAStick

    If dumph wasn’t such a racist prick, he’d realize that rebuilding Puerto Rico would let all these D voters go home, where their lack of federal representation would do the least harm to him and his party of fellow racist pricks. He’d rather let this migration realignment happen than spend a dime helping the nonwhite and nonrich.

  14. 14.

    Duane

    Trump and his ilk want Puerto Rico to fall apart so they can move in and obtain American oceanfront properties at a discount.I’m being as cynical as I can just to keep up with the crooks.

  15. 15.

    frosty

    @Emerald:

    Of course they’ll double down on the voter suppression, but I think that’s a topic Tom Perez has on his radar.

    “Think” “On the radar”. That’s my belief too and it’s far too late to have it on the radar. We should have been going all-out on this a year ago.

  17. 17.

    Peale

    Yeah. Heard this story before. I’ll believe that the displaced will change the landscape in Florida when I hear that voter registration is up. They’ve moved, but it doesn’t mean much if they’re mad a trump but don’t see how the fact that they have a GOP rep in their new location matters. If there are 10,000 mid term voters in that 50,000 I wouldn’t be surprised. Even with an 80/20 favorable democratic vote, that’s only 6,000 net votes and that’s optimistic. Sorry. I’m down on the “Hispanics will save us” hope.

    Unless those hopeful democratic strategists think up some tactics t actually turn out tens if not hundreds of thousands of new voters in Florida, the Democratic woes in that state will continue. But they don’t do tactics, which is why Hispanic citizens continue to turn out 15-20% lower than other groups.

  18. 18.

    Millard Filmore

    On the one hand I like Texas and Florida turning blue. On the other hand I despair of the ethnic cleansing of Puerto Rico.

  21. 21.

    marcopolo

    Speaking of Puerto Rico, I read this despairingly depressive piece today that looks at the future population demographics of the island. It’s quite well written and researched out the wahzoo and just reaches very sad conclusions.

    Yesterday, I was in Puerto Rico, speaking at a listening session hosted by the Fiscal Control Board, which I will hereafter call Promesa, after the law that established it. They had me attend as a speaker on Puerto Rico’s demographic future since, after all, I have written about the topic quite a lot.
    But since what I said is probably of some general interest, I wanted to show here what I said there.
    Basically, I wanted to look at plausible forecasts for Puerto Rico’s population. So I built a population model for Puerto Rico out to 2060. I benchmarked it to Puerto Rico’s 2011–2016 demographic experience in terms of fertility, mortality, and migration rates. All benchmarks are individual age-and-sex-specific inflow/outflow/fertility/mortality rates. I also subdivide inflows between international inflows, inflows of Puerto Ricans from the mainland Puerto Rican population, and other inflows from the mainland. I also enable separate parameters to create separate shocks for different age/sex/variable categories (so for example I can easily input a shock for “Mortality for men under the age of 35” or “International inflows of women over age 22”, etc). I also model the Puerto Rican population on the mainland using reported ancestry data and an assumption about identity-drift over time.

  22. 22.

    frosty

    @Omnes Omnibus: All I know is that when I go to respond to organizations I think are working on it, all they want is my money. There’s no place to volunteer to do stuff, like help people get birth certs or drive them to the DMV. Could be I’m not looking hard enough but I thought by now there would be a volunteer outreach campaign.

    No emails from anyone for anything except begging for money.

  25. 25.

    marcopolo

    @frosty: Check out Let America Vote

    Extreme voter suppression laws that disproportionately impact people based on their race or ethnicity, gender, age, or income have started popping up all over the country. If we don’t fight back, more and more Americans will become disenfranchised.

    Over the past decade, momentum has gone dangerously in the wrong direction. Jason Kander started Let America Vote to fight back against proposals across the country that make it harder for eligible voters to exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot. Whether it’s extreme identification requirements, questionable purges of voter rolls, voter intimidation, new and extreme voter registration processes, or anything that makes voting harder, Let America Vote will be there to lead the way against it. Through online and grassroots organizing, an aggressive earned media strategy, and advertising, Let America Vote will play a crucial role among the existing network of organizations fighting for voting rights.

    Those who believe in preserving the right to vote must start winning the political argument. That is the mission of Let America Vote.

  27. 27.

    Duane

    @marcopolo: Failure to properly rebuild Puerto Rico leads to people leaving, a lack of demand for real estate and low prices. Bargains become available for Trump and his cronies.
    Trump’s administration is evil and this outcome is their plan.

  29. 29.

    marcopolo

    @Duane: Well, if you read the article I linked to you will see the demographic situation on Puerto Rico was awful even before Maria hit. A net out-migration level of 2% for at least a decade. Since it’s the young people out-migrating, PR has the lowest birthrate of any US state/territory. And one of the oldest populations to boot. So the island has been depopulating for a while–and really not even all that slowly, but the hurricane has put that situation on steroids. And that leads to a shrunken tax base, because a decent economy requires a working (not retirement) age population and the impossibility of trying to cover the costs of infrastructure built out for a larger pop. I live just outside of St. Louis, MO. One of their biggest problems over the past several decades has been maintaining an infrastructure build for 950,000 people in 1960 with an actual population base of about 300,000 since the 90s.

  30. 30.

    Duane

    @marcopolo: It really is a complicated situation isn’t it? I think Trump is aware too, and is trying to take advantage by sabotaging the recovery. It’s how he thinks, it’s what he does, its who he is.

  32. 32.

    Ptocopius

    But organizing desperate voters to get what they need from an unresponsive government is one of the Democratic Party’s best skill sets…

    You think? I don’t think they’ve been very good at that for a very long time. Like 40 years. Like, since Carter. That’s when the neoliberals started taking control of the party. They really gained momentum in 1983 when the New Democrats banded together and built the Democratic Leadership Council, which expressly had destroying the New Deal as one of its goals.

  33. 33.

    Ptocopius

    @Emerald:

    Of course they’ll double down on the voter suppression, but I think that’s a topic Tom Perez has on his radar.

    I believe Tom Perez has as his priority preventing any candidate to the left of Herbert Hoover from getting on any ballot. If he fails at that then the next highest priority is to prevent them from getting elected. Just like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Kaine. Seriously, the democratic nomenklatura fears the left more than they fear losing elections. The reason they give is utterly incomprehensible; they fear the left because they will cause the party to lose elections.

  34. 34.

    Adria McDowell

    A lot of old school Puerto Ricans have the tradition of living and working on the mainland, then retiring to Puerto Rico for their senior years. This has been going on for a long time, even before the hurricanes, but now a lot of NY Puerto Ricans just retire to Florida instead.

    There probably won’t be a Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans by the time my daughter is my age. All Puerto Rico has to do is look at Hawaii for a glimpse of their future.

  35. 35.

    enplaned

    What are the chances the Dems take the time and money to actually organize these folks. It’s one thing to have the right to vote, it’s another to do so…

  39. 39.

    Aardvark Cheeselog

    well over 50,000 Puerto Ricans will have moved to Florida and made it their residence heading into the midterm election next year

    Not gonna do us a lot of good if they all move to Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Any of them winding up in red districts?

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