This is the 12th in a series of analyses of the election results to see whether or not the Cubans are abandoning the GOP. Other posts in this series can be found here.
In this part I wanted to examine how the three Cuban-American congressional incumbents from South Florida fared in comparison to John McCain. In order to do this I had to total presidential election results for the 587 different precincts that comprise the three districts in the county (because I’m interested in the Cuban-American vote I only looked at Miami-Dade County’s election results even though the three districts contain parts of other counties).
As you can see above John McCain actually lost the Miami-Dade portions of two of the congressional districts.
Of course we know that all three incumbents won but it’s telling that their personal popularity is significantly higher than McCain’s was. They not only achieved higher PERCENTAGES than McCain, they received more ACTUAL VOTES than McCain. That is to say that the three candidates did not win because of the substantial number of voters who came to the polls on election day only to vote for Obama.
There’s already been a flurry of news stories about polls indicating that a majority Cuban-Americans are against the U.S. embargo on Cuba. The above elections results show that such polls are B.S. The three congresspersons that were re-elected last month are the staunchest defenders of the embargo and also represent the greatest number of Cuban-Americans in the country. The people have spoken.
Another remarkable thing to note is the total rejection of Raul Martinez in the District 21 race. In 2006 an unknown Democrat named Frank J. Gonzalez ran against Lincoln Diaz-Balart and obtained 36.7% of the vote in Miami-Dade despite only raising $16,430. Martinez, the much ballyhooed former mayor of Hialeah, was only able to obtain 40.2% even after raising almost $1.9 million and that doesn’t even include the substantial money spent by the Democratic party on the race.
Well, Henry, wishful thinking is a powerful thing, even if it is delusional. As for Martinez, the guy is way too obviously a scumbag, no matter how immaculate he keeps his hair. He’s not even remotely in Bill Clinton’s league when it comes to being a smooth operator.