Carlos Perez

Cuban Americans Kept Florida Red Last night Cubans stayed with the Republican Party and prevented Florida from becoming a blue state. According to exit polls, 56% supported the GOP nominee for governor. Every other Hispanic group in Florida went 60-40 the other way. Had Cubans voted like other Hispanics, not only would Floridians have woken up this morning to a Democratic governor and possibly a Senator, the GOP would have three fewer House seats. The Erosion Trump won about 70% of the Cuban vote in 2024. This year the Republican ticket won somewhere between 56% and 60% of Cubans. That 12 to 20 point shift is not insignificant, but the bottom did not fall out. Why Cubans Held Cubans stuck wth the GOP for three reasons. First, political muscle memory. Cubans have been voting Republican since the Reagan era, and the GOP has local institutions to withstand this kind of a political hurricane. Second, Cuban Americans are largely insulated from immigration enforcement in a way other Hispanics are not. For sixty years, immigration law has given Cubans a path to legal status almost on arrival. Every Cuban American voter, by definition, is a U.S. citizen, and unlike in other immigration communities, most of the people they know have legal status. Also, Republicans got lucky. The Democrats nominated a DSA member at the top of the Senate ticket in a state where over a million residents fled communist dictatorships. This gave the GOP an organic galvanizing message they did not have to fabricate. Why The Slip According to the recent FIU poll, Cubans still back the administration on foreign policy. On the economy they are split 47-48 (that is the issue they rank most important). This is how you get normal midterm erosion. Additionally, 76 percent oppose deporting Cubans without legal status or a criminal record. This insulation has limits, of course. For the last past 18 months, on a near nightly basis, local Miami media has run a sympathetic story about a family or a neighbor who was deported or detained by ICE. There is a clear sense in the community that the administration overplayed its hand, or as Cubans say, se les fue la mano — even among Republicans. What It Means Cubans are the GOP's last Hispanic firewall. It was just stress-tested by the same two pressures that collapsed the Republican Party's Hispanic vote elsewhere and barely held up, thanks to both history and a little luck. The good news for Republicans is that you have agency. Treating Cubans who came here through a program the U.S. government told them to follow like cartel members is a policy failure, morally asinine, and politically dumb. Immigration enforcement and economic concerns are also not separate issues in economy that runs on construction labor. Fix this and Florida stays solidly red. Don't, and it might look more like Texas in the next election.

Please pray for Christians in Nigeria. This Christian girl was captured and had to choose between converting to Islam or death. She chose death. May all Christians have this kind of courage. This is what Islam wants to bring to the world. Convert or die.

🚨 ÚLTIMA HORA: Nuevas imágenes de la masacre contra cristianos en Etiopía. Islamistas irrumpieron en una aldea cristiana, incendiaron dos iglesias y comenzaron a masacrar a familias enteras. Más de 60 cristianos fueron masacrados.