Deportations, Castro negotiations: where Trump-loving Cubans disagree with him, poll says
Cubans and Cuban Americans in South Florida broadly support Donald Trump’s approach to the island, although that backing falls off sharply for the administration’s mass deportation of Cubans, direct negotiations with Fidel Castro’s regime and the prospect of economic reforms without regime change, according to a new poll conducted for the Miami Herald.
South Florida Cuban American voters helped Trump deliver his decisive win for a second presidential term in 2024, but the poll findings revealed key departures within one of Trump’s loyal bases ahead of a challenging midterm election cycle for Republicans.
While Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted nationwide, a sweeping 67% of poll respondents said they support Trump’s handling of Cuba policy. Approval numbers were even higher for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban American from Miami.
But when it came to other key actions taken by Trump’s administration, that solid backing began to waver among Cuban Americans, who make up one of the president’s most ardent pockets of support in South Florida:
- Only 46% of respondents said they approve of the Trump administration negotiating directly with Cuba’s current Communist government, as it has been.
- About 28% of respondents said they approve of the Trump administration’s increased deportations of Cubans.
- And just 19% said they’d be satisfied with an agreement that leads to economic reforms in Cuba without regime change.
“They’re saying, ‘Whoa, yes, we want engagement, yes, we trust President Trump and we trust Secretary Rubio and what they’re doing. But this has got to end in a change, a radical change of governance on the island,” said Bendixen & Amandi President Fernand Amandi.
The poll, conducted from April 6-10, surveyed 800 randomly selected Cubans and Cuban Americans living in South Florida, from the Florida Keys to Palm Beach County. The phone survey, conducted by polling firms Bendixen & Amandi International and The Tarrance Group, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Of the respondents who were registered voters, 57% were Republicans and 17% were Democrats. A majority, 64%, were over the age of 50.
Air Force veteran and retired professional pilot Armando Lopez came to the U.S. in 1961 and was among the broad base of older Trump supporters who responded to the poll. He said he’s still waiting on the results he believes Trump will deliver in Cuba.
“I love Trump, to me he is the best we ever had. How he’s handling Cuba, so far he’s doing great, but he hasn’t done much for Cuba. What’s happening with Cuba is just a reflection of what happened in Venezuela,” he said.
Lopez wants to see regime change on the island and wouldn’t view it as a victory if there are only economic changes without new leadership.
“I wouldn’t be upset with Trump because he has done more than anybody else, but I would say that we have not won much if that happens,” he said.
Lopez’s cautious hope for change in Cuba is similar to what conservative political groups told the Herald they’re hearing from the voters they want to turn out to the polls in November.
“I don’t think the president’s been clear how that’s going to be achieved. Do we want a free Cuba? Absolutely, where people have a real, true democracy where they vote for their leaders — we support that 100%,” said David Santiago, the strategic director at LIBRE Florida, a conservative Latino voter outreach group. “The concern for us lies in how does that get achieved and how is he going to go about it? So we’re kind of waiting to see what that really could look like.”
The U.S. has been holding back-channel talks with Cuba, including relatives of Raúl Castro and his inner circle, about gradually easing crippling U.S. sanctions in exchange for Cuban leaders enacting changes on the island. Cuba’s handpicked president Miguel Díaz-Canel has said he won’t step down from power and will resist pressure from the Trump administration.
Poll respondents who said they have no party affiliation — a group Democrats see as a key demographic to win over — were evenly split on their approval and disapproval of Trump’s Cuba policy in the poll.
The poll also found less support for Trump’s policies from young Cubans and Cuban-Americans. That group was far less likely to grant blanket approval for Trump and Rubio’s approach to Cuba than their older counterparts. Just 44% of respondents under 35 said they approved of Trump’s handling of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
That group was also more likely than older respondents to be satisfied with economic changes on the island even if they don’t result in regime change.
The strongest sentiment across the survey was on issue of the U.S. possibly reaching an agreement with Cuba that allows the current government to remain in power even if there are significant economic reforms: 69% of respondents said they strongly disapprove of any such deal. Among voters with no party affiliation who responded to the survey, 67% felt the same way.
Only the young Cubans and Cuban-Americans in South Florida were open to that possibility: 38% of respondents under 35 said they’d approve of such a deal.
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