The Cuban-American community in Florida garnered attention on Twitter early Wednesday after President Donald Trump gained the crucial swing state. The Cubans in Miami-Dade overwhelmingly supported Trump that led to his win in the state.
About 55 percent of Florida's Cuban-Americans and 30 percent of Puerto Ricans voted for Trump, according to NBC News exit polls. Rest of the 48 percent comprised 'other Latinos' that backed the incumbent president.
On Wednesday, Cubans from Florida became a topic of discussion on Twitter with Americans blaming the community for backing Trump citing his apprehension about the Latinos in the country. "Cuban voters voted for authoritarianism. How ironic. Trump is another Castro," wrote one Twitter user.
How Did Trump Influence Cubans in Miami-Dade?
Florida has a sizeable population from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American countries. For over a year, the Trump campaign focused on projecting Democratic challenger Joe Biden as a socialist playing on the fears of the Latin American community, especially Cubans, over failed socialist governments.
Most of the Cubans in Florida had fled Cuba after Fidel Castro's communist government came to power. The campaign also played Spanish-language advertisements comparing Biden to socialist figures from Latin America as Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. One of the ads highlighted a photo of Biden meeting with Maduro in Brazil.
"This mini red wave came through. It was a foreseeable trainwreck for Democrats when you saw Cuban Americans," Guillermo Grenier, a pollster and Florida International University professor, said, according to Politico. "The air you breathe here is Republican. It's hard for Democrats to show up here and try to create a different atmosphere."
Grenier and other analysts reportedly estimated that the incumbent president would have won the Cuban American vote by more than 120,000 Cubans. This estimate is reportedly higher than the Trump campaign's 2020 target.
