exile

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.

This is the eleventh 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.

The chart above shows the 2004 and 2008 election results in the 6 zip codes I’ve analyzed. These are 6 of the most Cuban zip codes in the county.
As you can see the net gain for the Democratic candidate was 4.4%. Hardly the monumental shift that the local and national media was projecting. In fact voters in these precincts preferred John McCain to Obama by a margin of more than 2-1. I have no doubt that even this minor shift was driven partly by younger Cubans who voted for Obama but it’s not clear whether their votes were driven by ideology (meaning that they identify themselves as liberal Democrats) or simply because of anti-Bush sentiment, the economy and the charisma of Obama.
Notes: The population statistics are from the 2000 census and are therefore outdated but are the best I could obtain.
Also note the vast differences in total votes from one election to the other. That’s because absentee ballots were handled differently in 2004. They were attributed to “absentee precincts” rather than the traditional precinct the voter belonged to. In 2008 all ballots are attributed to the voter’s precinct.

This is the tenth 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 Part 6, I analyzed the precincts that are located in the 33010 zip code. According to 2000 census estimates (the latest info I could get) the zip code is 66.1% Cuban. We discovered that in those 10 precincts John McCain obtained 63.2% of the vote.
Well I went back to the 2004 election results and found that in the 6 precincts (there was a new one in 2008 that didn’t exist in 2004) George W. Bush obtained 70.9% of the vote. That’s a shift of 7.7%. This is more of a shift than we’ve seen in the other zip codes thus far. Consider that the proportion of Cubans in each zip code could also be shifting.
There are some other pretty big caveats to this analysis. First off some of the precinct boundaries have changed and even the locations of the precinct houses have changed. However the precincts still generally represent the same areas. The next caveat is that absentee ballots were reported differently back then. They had something called absentee precincts. Nowadays all ballots are attributed to the voters precinct regardless of whether the voted absentee or on election day (or early voted).
Until next time, I’ll be searching for the shift.
UPDATE: This post was updated to reflect the county’s revised election results as of 11/14/08.

This is the ninth 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 Part 4, I analyzed the precincts that are located in the 33144 zip code. According to 2000 census estimates (the latest info I could get) the zip code is 69.7% Cuban. We discovered that in those 7 precincts John McCain obtained 69.7% of the vote.
Well I went back to the 2004 election results and found that in the same 7 precincts George W. Bush obtained 70.4% of the vote. That’s a shift of 0.7%.
There are some pretty big caveats to this analysis however. First off some of the precinct boundaries have changed and even the locations of the precinct houses have changed. However the precincts still generally represent the same areas. The next caveat is that absentee ballots were reported differently back then. They had something called absentee precincts. Nowadays all ballots are attributed to the voters precinct regardless of whether the voted absentee or on election day (or early voted).
Until next time, I’ll be searching for the shift.
UPDATE: This post was edited to reflect the county’s revised election results as of 11/14/08.

This is the seventh 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 Part 1, I analyzed the precincts that are located in the 33175 zip code. According to 2000 census estimates (the latest info I could get) the zip code is 56.6% Cuban. We discovered that in those 14 precincts John McCain obtained 68.7% of the vote.
Well I went back to the 2004 election results and found that in the same 14 precincts George W. Bush obtained 71.8% of the vote. That’s a shift of 3.2%.
There are some pretty big caveats to this analysis however. First off some of the precinct boundaries have changed and even the locations of the precinct houses have changed. However the precincts still generally represent the same areas. The next caveat is that absentee ballots were reported differently back then. They had something called absentee precincts. Nowadays all ballots are attributed to the voters precinct regardless of whether the voted absentee or on election day (or early voted).
Until next time, I’ll be searching for the shift.
UPDATE: This post was edited to reflect the revised election results as of 11/14/08.

This is the seventh 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 Part 3, I analyzed the precincts that are located in the 33165 zip code. According to 2000 census estimates (the latest info I could get) the zip code is 61.3% Cuban. We discovered that in those 16 precincts John McCain obtained 68.6% of the vote.
Well I went back to the 2004 election results and found that in the same 16 precincts George W. Bush obtained 71.5% of the vote. That’s a shift of 2.9%.
There are some pretty big caveats to this analysis however. First off some of the precinct boundaries have changed and even the locations of the precinct houses have changed. One precinct house was actually was moved to a neighboring zip code. However the precincts still generally represent the same areas. The next caveat is that absentee ballots were reported differently back then. They had something called absentee precincts. Nowadays all ballots are attributed to the voters precinct regardless of whether the voted absentee or on election day (or early voted).
Until next time, I’ll be searching for the shift.
UPDATE: This post has been edited to reflect the county’s revised election results as of 11/14/08.