After almost two months in the sweltering island heat of Puerto Rico, some are driven to stay by a desire to rebuild while hundreds of thousands pursue a new life in Florida under the same motivations.
Afred Gonzalez, a Psychology major at the University of Central Florida, was at his home in Puerto Rico when both storms tore through it.
“Maria was a hellhole,” Gonzalez said. “The floors were shaking, I had these window shutters and water was going through them, my garage door wrapped itself around my mom’s car like a glove, it was crazy.”
Gonzalez was living with his family and going to school in Puerto Rico at the time of the hurricanes. A month later, seeing little improvement to the island’s infrastructure, he decided to leave.
“I could’ve gone back to school, but I decided not to because my house still doesn’t have power or water and gas is very expensive,” Gonzalez said. “I’d rather make a life here and kind of leave that back.”
After making himself comfortable in his new home, Gonzalez earned an Undergraduate degree at UCF. He’s one of over 130,000 Puerto Ricans who have arrived in Florida following the events of hurricanes Irma and Maria, a number that political analysts are watching closely for good reason.
Over the course of the next two years, some experts estimate that up to 300,000 Puerto Ricans may move to the United States, the vast majority of them likely coming to Florida due to its close proximity and historically large Puerto Rican demographic.
Floridian politics are known for being very close; the margin of victory in Florida for presidential candidates is only 2.6% on average, and Florida’s vote has decided who won these races for the last six elections. In the 2016 Presidential election, Donald Trump won Florida by approximately 112,911 votes.
The political “battlegrounds” of Florida are so nicknamed because of their oddly even nature. Northern Floridians tend to vote Republican while Southern Floridians favor Democrats in a way that nearly cancels each other out, and between them is a sea of registered voters so closely divided between red and blue that it would seem purple if you squinted at it. Central Florida, this purple sea from Tampa to Orlando and Daytona, is the swing region; as of 2016, the sea was 36.4% Republican to 35.9% Democrat, a difference of five tenths of one percent.
Associate Professor Aubrey Jewett, Ph.D., of UCF’s Political Science department thinks that this is exactly why political analysts are paying attention to Puerto Ricans as if they were eying the perfect storm.
“Given those statistics that we know, historically, Puerto Ricans are supporting democratic candidates,” Jewett said, referring to the fact that that two thirds to three quarters of Puerto Ricans in Florida vote Democrat.
As a Political Science academic, Jewett looks to trends in the past when he begins to consider the future.
“What political science 101 election history tells us is that the president’s party tends to lose some votes in the first midterm election after that president is elected,” Jewett said, elbowing at the recent Democratic victories on November 7.
This means that a surge in blue politics is happening regardless of the Puerto Rican migration.
“Over the last eight years we have had four statewide elections each decided by one percentage point, so take that fact, take everything in context, and then say ‘okay, now we’re adding potentially 300,000 Puerto Rican residents’.”
Editor | Writer 