No one pretends politics in Florida is simple, and the Haitian diaspora in and around Miami-Dade County is no different.
Yet, with Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance and conservative social media gleefully engaging in overt anti-Haitian racism, the Haitian community could very well carry out the sweetest revenge—delivering Florida for the Democrats at both the presidential and Senate levels.
On Monday, Vance falsely claimed on X that Haitian migrants were “causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” adding that “[r]eports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” On Tuesday, Trump echoed the latter claims about pets during the presidential debate.
This is false and disgusting and has been thoroughly debunked. And Vance’s and Trump’s bigotry could cost them.
Florida has the largest number of Haitian Americans in the country. Roughly 544,000 people of Haitian ancestry live there, or around 2.4% of Florida’s 22.2 million residents, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This is a heavily immigrant community, with lots of noncitizens unable to vote.
The most up-to-date information the Census Bureau provides on that question is its 2021 American Community Survey. At the time, there were around 487,600 residents of Haitian origin in Florida, including about 121,300 who were not citizens and thus could not vote—i.e., around 25% of the population. So if those percentages hold steady with the 2023 numbers, that would suggest there are 408,000 potential Haitian voters in Florida. Of course, that figure is speculative, with some researchers estimating around 300,000 Florida voters of Haitian ancestry.
Either way, it’s a sizable population. And research suggests they vote.
In the 2018 general election, turnout among voters with Haitian ancestry was 73%, 9 percentage points higher than the state’s overall turnout rate, according to two researchers at the University of Florida in 2020. A similarly high turnout was observed in 2016 as well.
“These numbers allow you to understand that Haitians vote at higher levels, that there is a large Haitian population in Florida, that there are a number of Haitians who have ran for office and won office, and that as a political group, they really have arrived,” one of the researchers told The Haitian Times.
In other words, Republicans have every reason to fear Haitian voter participation. In 2020, 71% of voters of color went for Joe Biden and 26% went for Donald Trump, according to exit polls. That means that if there are indeed 408,000 potential Florida voters of Haitian descent, universal participation would net Democrats 183,600 votes.
Republican Sen. Rick Scott, facing reelection this year, won in 2018 by just 10,000 votes. Donald Trump won the state in 2020 by a larger 371,000 votes, but if the state is as close as some polls claim, a Haitian voting surge would certainly help close the gap.
We have three recent polls showing Scott’s lead over Democratic nominee Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the low- to mid-single digits: 5 percentage points in Morning Consult, 1 point in Emerson College/The Hill, 3 points in Redfield and Wilton Strategies/The Telegraph. So Scott shouldn’t be in any mood to alienate a voting bloc.
Democrats will certainly use the right’s racist lies to agitate a Haitian community that is no doubt already furious. After all, Vance isn’t giving up his racist lies, tweeting on Tuesday, “Keep the cat memes flowing.” What kind of memes might he be talking about? Maybe this disgusting one from right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong:
And Elon Musk is further encouraging it on his platform.
As Republicans chortle at their debased and bullshit attack on a community, it would be fitting if it ultimately cost them the Senate, if not contributed to a landslide Democratic presidential victory.
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