A just released poll finds that Americans support the normalizing of relations with Cuba and Floridians even more so.
Conducted by the Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington research institution, the survey found that nationwide, 56 percent of respondents favored changing the U.S. policy with Cuba, with an increase to 63 percent among Florida adults.
“The survey shows that the majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle are ready for a policy shift. Most surprisingly, Floridians are even more supportive than an already supportive nation to incrementally or fully change course. This is a key change from the past: Cuba used to be intractable because Florida was intractable. This poll argues that is no longer true,” Peter Schechter and Jason Marczak, top officials of the Latin Center, wrote in the introduction to the survey.
Specifically, the poll revealed that 6 in 10 respondents, nationwide, would like the policy to be changed to enable US companies to do more business in Cuba and allow Americans to travel and spend money in Cuba without restrictions.
The poll’s findings fit with former Gov. Charlie Crist’s recent statements that he is opposed to the U.S. Cuban embargo. As a former Republican governor, Crist at one time backed U.S. sanctions against Cuba, but has said his attitude has changed overtime.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott, against whom Crist is running as a Democrat to retake his old job, criticized the former governor saying, he is not standing with the people of Cuba and the embargo needs to be continued, the Miami Herald reported.
The survey was conducted in English and Spanish among 1,024 randomly-selected U.S. adults, with oversamples of 617 Florida residents and 525 Latinos from January 7-22, 2014 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
