We Like Puerto Rico made a bold claim at their Facebook wall: “Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City thanks to Puerto Rican voters.” Is that true? Two mayors of Puerto Rican heritage were also elected this week — was that also thanks to Puerto Rican voters? In fact, do puerto Rican voters matter?
Did Puerto Rican voters affect the NYC Mayoral race?
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate who surprised many by winning a three-way race for Mayor of New York, appeared with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Puerto Rico Day parade this year. His opponent, Andrew Cuomo, walked in the parade. The two split NYC’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods between them.
The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo warns against jumping to conclusions about the influence of Puerto Rican voters in the states, since information about voters’ ethnicity is not directly gathered. However, analysts frequently cite the stateside voters of Puerto Rican heritage as a voting bloc of increasing importance.
And, while voters are not sorted into many groups based on heritage, Latinos are opften counted, and they were in this case. Latinos tended to vote for Mamdani. Puerto Ricans make up the largest proportion of NYC Latinos.
In addition, Mamdani’s first political trip following the lection was to Puerto Rico, where he attended the Somos conference.
Did Puerto Ricans affect the presidential race?
Puerto Ricans in swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania helped to bring Donald Trump into the White House, according to sources like NPR.
The irony here is that Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico cannot vote in presidential elections. The voters on the Island chose Kamala Harris in a straw poll right after a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage,” But their votes don’t count.
Lessons for candidates
Major parties in Puerto Rico are not aligned with the national Democratic and Republican parties, and young people in puerto Rico have not been brought up in Democratic or Republican families, as many on the mainland have. On the Island, Trump-supporting Republicans like the current governor and Democrats like the previous governor are elected fairly equally.
A new state of Puerto Rico will vote for the party that makes the best case for itself. Attempts to predict the future trend of Puerto Rico — just like the pre-statehood attempts to predict the future voting trends of Hawaii and Alaska — are likely to be inaccurate. Puerto Rico will probably be a swing state, and will certainly be open to the ideas of both parties.
What candidates of either party should keep in mind is that they can’t ignore Puerto Rican voters. As recent elections have shown, these voters are an increasingly influential part of the political life of the United States. And they care about Puerto Rico’s status. Candidates need to make their positions on statehood for Puerto Rico known.
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