The Puerto Rican Vote in the 2024 US Presidential Elections

Abstract

With a view on this year’s US elections, the article explores the Puerto Rican vote on both the island and the mainland. Puerto Ricans have long been a transnational or trans-local community, with only 3.3 million living on the island today and 5.8 million in the United States proper, most of whom are now residents of Florida, surpassing the Nuyorican primacy. Stemming from the island’s territorial commonwealth status, its residents cannot vote for president. In contrast, the 1.1 million increasingly middle-class Florida Puerto Ricans have been recognized as the swing vote in the past few election cycles. Their mainland political leanings are mixed, but the island’s constitutional status remains a top voter intensity issue, with 80% preferring statehood. In the meantime, as one of the dramatic developments of this election cycle, a new status referendum was added to the ballot in Puerto Rico, asking voters to state their preference for one of the constitutionally viable modes of decolonization — Statehood, Independence or Free Associated State. Topping it with a symbolic vote (straw poll) for the US presidential ticket — the first time island Puerto Ricans cast a vote for US president — may be significant not for its immediate political consequences (the results will not translate into electoral votes), but as it could help debunk the myth that admitting Puerto Rico into the union would automatically cement a Democratic majority in both houses. In examining the current multifaceted dynamics of the Puerto Rican vote ahead of the coming elections, the article draws on past precedents and weighs recent voting patterns.