Factors in the Growth of Republican Voting in the Miami-Dade County SMSA

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 27, No. 1, May 1987, pp. 1-17 FACTORS IN THE GROWTH OF REPURLICAN VOTING IN THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY SMSA Gerald R. Webster INTRODUCTION. The past decade has been a period of dramatic and oftentimes violent social change in the Miami-Dade County SMSA. In 1980 the SMSA experienced violent race riots in many of its predominantly Black neighborhoods such as Brownsville-Liberty City and Overtown. In that same year nearly 125,000 Cuban refugees entered Dade County through the Mariel boatlift, many settling in established Hispanic enclaves such as Little Havana and Hialeah. Due in part to these events, the City of Miami's 1980 murder rate was the highest among major municipalities in the country at 65.5 per 100,000. (1) While Dade County's recent social upheavals undoubtedly have a number of causes, the SMSA's rapid population growth and changing demographic character have certainly contributed to the development of many of the area's problems. (2) Dade County's population was estimated at 1.9 million in 1983, an increase of more than 100 percent since 1960. (3) There has also been a rapid transformation of the SMSA's ethnic makeup in the past two decades . While Latins constituted approximately five percent of the population in 1960, today they are estimated to comprise over 42 percent of the total. (4) In addition to Cubans which constitute 26 percent of the County's population, there are also sizable numbers of other Latin and Caribbean groups including Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Nicaraguans , Haitians, and Jamaicans. The SMSA also has a growing Black population which accounted for over 17 percent of Dade County's 1980 population. The growth of the Black population is in part due to the arrival of Blacks formerly residing in several Caribbean countries including Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas. (5) The non-Latin White population has recently suffered a significant decline as a proportion of the total population dropping from nearly 80 percent in 1960 to approximately 47 percent in 1980. (6) The political behavior of Dade County residents has also undergone Dr. Webster is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University ofWyoming , Laramie, WY 82071 . Southeastern Geographer significant change in the recent past (Table 1). Historically Dade County has been a liberal stronghold in a conservative state and region and has been more supportive of the Democratic Party in presidential elections than the nation as a whole. In the twenty-two presidential elections since 1900, the Republican Party's nominee has received a plurality or majority of Dade County's votes only six times, most recently with Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984. (7) The results of the presidential elections of 1980 and 1984 are significant historical benchmarks in the electoral character of Dade County. In these elections the SMSA's support for a Republican Party presidential nominee equalled or exceeded the nationwide proportion of support for the candidate. The MiamiDade County SMSA is no longer a liberal stronghold with firm loyalties to the Democratic Party. Rather its level of conservatism and support for the Republican Party parallels that found nationally and is becoming more like that existing in Florida and the South generally. The purpose of this study is to examine three hypothesized explanations for Dade County's growing electoral support for the Republican Party in presidential elections. These three explanations may be labeled the "population change," "ethnicity" and "traditional voting cleavage deterioration" hypotheses and are drawn from the following review of the literature pertaining to the electoral behavior of the South and the Miami-Dade County SMSA specifically. LITERATURE. Predictions of political change and growing support for the Republican Party in the once solidly Democratic South are not new. As early as 1950 VO. Key stated, "The growth of cities contains the seeds of political change for the South." (8) Key contended that urban Whites in the South were "less bound by [the] Reconstruction tradition " of solid support for the Democratic Party due to the "race question ." He further believed that this reality in conjunction with "a continued leftward veering of the Democratic Party nationally" were responsible for growing "open support of Republican presidential candidates by...