Puerto Ricans: State's 2nd Largest Hispanic Group
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CBS4, Miami, FL
Jul 23, 2007
Puerto Ricans: State's 2nd Largest Hispanic Group
(CBS4) ORLANDO Puerto Ricans make up Florida's second largest Hispanic population after Cubans. But according to research by an FIU professor, they don't show a pattern of voting in large turnouts like other ethnic groups.
Professor Dario Moreno said that since 2004, the nonpartisan group Democracia U.S.A. has registered more than 44,000 Hispanic voters. Many of them are Puerto Ricans.
Republicans have campaigned heavily and won more Hispanic votes in central Florida in recent years. Meanwhile, Democrats hope the immigration debate taps into Puerto Ricans' identity as Hispanics and spurs them to vote.
That's already the case for 28-year-old Samaria Rodriguez, who told the Associated Press that she thought voting wouldn't affect her life until she met her future husband, an illegal immigrant from Honduras. Now she realized that with the immigration issue, it does matter.
