A straw poll was conducted at the Political Salsa event held by the Puerto Rico Bar Association in Orlando last week, sponsored by the Puerto Rico Statehood Council and PR51st. Voters were asked who they planned to vote for.
The results:
- Hillary Clinton: 130 votes, or 49%
- Donald Trump: 103 votes, or 39%
- Gary Johnson: 22 votes, or 8%
- Jill Stein: 7 votes, or 2%
- Jeb Bush: 1 write-in vote
- Even McMullin: 1 write- in vote
This translates to 130 Democratic votes, 105 Republican votes, and 29 independent votes. There were a total of 264 votes.
The straw poll also included the position of Senator for Florida. Republican Marco Rubio received 122 votes, or 46%. Democrats Alan Grayson and Patrick Murphy each pulled 45 votes, or 17% of the total. 7 more candidates divided the remainder of the 261 votes.
The most important take away here might be that Puerto Rican voters are not predictable. We still see claims that the Republican-led Congress won’t accept statehood for Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico would automatically vote Democratic. These results show that this is not the case.
Democrat Hillary Clinton won the straw poll, but so did Republican Marco Rubio. And both parties had strong showings.
We also see that, with more than 400 voters in attendance, only 246 voted for president and only 261 voted for senator. What does this tell us? Nothing. Blank ballots or failure to vote means nothing in elections.
No responses yet