Poll: Cuban-Americans Favor Obama's Shift in Policy

By John Harwood

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Cuba, the only country not invited to the fifth Summit of the
Americas in Trinidad and Tobago last week, was a central issue among the world
leaders attending the meeting.

President Obama has drawn fire from some Republicans for his just-completed trip to Latin America, but his administration’s outreach to Cuba may have impressed one politically important group back home: Cuban-Americans.

A new survey by Miami-based pollster Sergio Bendixen, a Democrat and long-time student of Hispanic politics within the United States, shows that roughly two-thirds of Cubans in this country approve the steps Mr. Obama has announced to lift restrictions on travel to Cuba and remittances to family members who still live there. Some 67 percent in the survey expressed a favorable view of Mr. Obama, while just 20 percent rated him unfavorably.

Those results are striking since Cuban-American voters, the vast majority of whom live in Florida, have been a reliable Republican constituency for decades. Cuban-American voters in Florida gave 65 percent of their vote to John McCain in November, Mr. Bendixen said.

In part, Mr. Bendixen attributed the surprising support for Mr. Obama’s initiatives to an ongoing generational shift in attitudes, with younger Cuban-Americans increasingly motivated by economic concerns rather than the staunch anti-Communism that dominated among their parents and grandparents after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. But Mr. Bendixen, who advised Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential primary campaign against Mr. Obama in 2008, credited the new president with successfully arguing that it’s time for a fresh approach.

“He has repeated over and over; ‘We tried this old strategy,’ ” Mr. Bendixen explained. “He obviously has romanced the Cuban community in a very effective way.”

Some Republicans, such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have argued that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, now Secretary of State, should obtain concessions such as the release of political prisoners before offering the Cuban government gestures and dialogue toward a new policy.

The Census has estimated that 1.2-million people of Cuban origin live in the United States. Mr. Bendixen said that roughly two thirds of those are now U.S. citizens. His survey, designed to reflect the views of all Cubans living in this country, included telephone interviews with 400 respondents in Florida, New Jersey and other states. The margin of error is 5 percentage points.