Miami-Dade voted for Trump. How do its voters feel now? | WSJ
- What to look for
- Arrest statistics for July (month 7) and on-the-ground interviews show how Cuban American voters in Miami who voted for Trump are experiencing immigration enforcement and cost-of-living pressures.
- Why it matters
- Understanding the gap between collective ideological framing rooted in anti-communist and anti-socialist sentiment and people's lived economic circumstances can help interpret reporting on Hispanic voter sentiment and changes in opinion polls during the US midterm election cycle.
AI summary
WSJ Rooted In host Sabrina Rodriguez says she returns to her hometown of Miami-Dade to gauge sentiment among Cuban American Hispanic voters who voted for Trump. She explains that about 70% of Miami-Dade residents are Hispanic and that the county has shifted to the right: Clinton won it by nearly 30 points in 2016, but Trump won by more than 11 points in the last presidential election. She says voters identify the economy and immigration as their top concerns, Miami has the highest cost of living among major US metropolitan areas, and immigration arrests by ICE's Miami office are more than twice as numerous as in other areas. She reports that both her friend Ellie, who switched from supporting Clinton to supporting Trump twice, and her mother, a Harris supporter, are disappointed with Trump's immigration policies. They feel enforcement is tearing families apart, citing Trump flags disappearing from the streets and an acquaintance's father being suddenly deported. She notes that during Trump's term 2, the number of Cubans arrested each month has risen to more than 3 times its previous level. More than half of the roughly 7 thousand 500 people arrested by the Miami office in July (month 7) had no criminal charges, contradicting expectations that only criminals would be targeted. Democratic House candidate Elliot Rodriguez says residents, including small-business owners, worry about rent and making ends meet and are afraid to go out, while even Trump supporters say this is not what they expected. Even the mayor of Hialeah, a core Trump stronghold, acknowledges that unaffiliated voters have turned away over immigration. With no tangible sense of results from Trump's Cuba policies either, she suggests that Republicans could suffer in the midterm elections if these voters switch to the Democrats or abstain from voting. All assessments of possible outcomes are the speakers' conditional judgments, not definitive short-term price predictions.