Ethnic Bloc Voting in Miami

Abstract

From the standpoint of ethnicity, the Miami Dade County SMSA has recently become one of the most diverse areas in the United States. This growing diversity largely resulted from political and economic events which transpired in Latin America and the Caribbean in the past three decades (Roswell 1983; Boswell and Curtis 1984). Though Hispanics compromised under 7 percent of Dade County's population in 1960, today people of Latin and Caribbean heritage are estimated to constitute over 42 percent of the SMSA's total population. The Cuban minority alone numbers one-half million, or 26 percent of the county's estimated 1983 population of 1.9 million.