In terms of favorable and unfavorable opinions same thing well see here in terms of the opinions of most hispanics tend to favor the democratic party, and you would think well game over. We dont need to discuss this any further. Well, not exactly. Because weve seen how different candidates have done very well in different races, and i have given just three, three hispanic republicans that have done well in their respective states. Actually Governor Martinez and sandoval are extremely popular in their respective states, and they were both reelected in resounding victories. In terms of issues, gop is seen antiimmigrant and thats clear and certainly recent Public Discourse doesnt help in that front. And weve seen, for example, how some hispanic groups specifically Puerto Ricans in the i4 corridor in Central Florida even though they voted in 2004 for george w. Bush reelection they voted overwhelmingly for president obama in his reelection just a few years later. And thats a reflection on the discussion of certain issues, including immigration even though thats not the number one issue among hispanics and especially puerto ricanamericans. We see other issues. Like, for example, School Choice and merit pay for teachers its support by hispanics across the board. So there are issues where traditionally republican proposals tend to resonate well amongst hispanics. And its important also to understand that hispanics tend to be entrepreneurial and one in ten hispanics own a Small Business, and thats also very important to note. In terms of these numbers are interesting, as well. If we go from this chart, we come along and at the beginning, how many people consider themselves to be republican, that number is pretty low. But then when we go down the list and we start discussing whether they consider themselves to be conservative the numbers start going up. Those that support limiting spending, lower taxes and reduced regulation these go up as well. Then whether government should promote opportunity instead of furnish look at those numbers and whether they are likely to consider voting for a republican you see that theres potential for growth in the Hispanic Community, of course, depending on who the nominees are and thats going very important. I want to be brief but just a few wild cards. Certainly, Donald Trumps candidacy and everything i thought i knew about politics has gone out the window with this candidacy. So again, i dont know why you invited me but i appreciate the invitation. But that is tapping into a sentiment thats real, its out there, and its not unique to the United States of america. You go to other western democracies and look at whats going on in europe. In spain, they had elections back in december. They still have not yet been able to put together a government. Look at united kingdom. Look at the National Front in france. Belgium. Its unbelievable. Antiimmigrant sentiment thats creeping up. Same thing with some of the former Eastern European countries. In germany, Angela Merkel who looked to be invincible is in trouble because of what has transpired, especially on new years eve with the new wave of immigrants. So in that sense this is not unique to america. And there is a sentiment out there, its not the topic of todays discussion but certainly you could argue that it may have something to do with the fact that after the 08, 09 fiscal meltdown, a large group of people were left behind and feel left behind and feel that their elected officials are not responding to their needs. That actually is a nice segue to the next one because its not just donald trump. Look at Bernie Sanders and what hes been able to accomplish. Regardless whether we were discussing this earlier, we think tomorrow perhaps secretary clinton can clinch the nomination, to be frank, if i asked anyone in this room if back in july anyone here thought that Bernie Sanders could be as competitive as he has been in these early primaries i bet you no one would have ventured to say that that would be the case. And again, he is tapping into a sentiment that is real. And true. Theres all this talk about a republican brokered convention. We dont know yet. But i read an analysis today as to what could happen if donald trump continues to garner 34 , of republican votes in every primary and if governor kasich carries ohio, senator cruz carries texas, even if senator rubio doesnt carry florida, donald trump would not have enough delegates come midjuly to win the nomination in the firstround of voting, and the Republican Party rules state that the delegates are bound to their candidate only in the firstround of voting. So after that firstround, its up for grabs and anything can happen, and if you dont think so, who could have vote Chris Christie would have endorsed donald trump this week . So again, anything is possible in the realm of politics. You would not have thought that. Okay. I will give you 20 bucks and you play the powerball for me this week. Anyhow. And then what will happen if Hillary Clinton is the nominee . And where will Bernie Sanders voters go . I will tell you something that will probably make you say, okay, now why did you invite this guy here at all. Many of those voters may end up voting for trump. And i know this sounds strange, but ive seen a lot of data pointing in that direction, and again, its a year of the wild cards and thats why were here so, again, thank you for the invitation. I look forward the discussion. Thank you. You mentioned would we invited you despite not having predicted some of these things. If having predicted the rise of donald trump was a prerequisite for speaking at American University our students in american politics wouldnt have any instructor. None of us saw this coming. [ laughter ] well, thank you. So when president obama and president raul castro made their surprise announcement last december 14, 2014, that they had agreed normalize u. S. Cuban relations that drew immediate fire from republican president ial hopefuls. Marco rubio said obama was the worst negotiator in his lifetime. Senator cruz accused obama of bailing out castro. And exgovernor bush accused obama of betraying freedom. Now as you might expect donald trump thought he could have gotten a better deal. [ laughter ] but notice that he didnt attack the idea of engaging with cuba. Now, the argument i want to make today is that the politics of the cuba issue are actually more complicated than most of these reflexive republican responses would indicate. So first, lets look at National Polling on obamas opening to cuba. As you can see, the president s opening is overwhelmingly popular with the general public. Above 70 favorable. And interestingly, its even supported by republicans. Its been getting more popular, as you can see, over time as we see how the process of normalization unfolds. And just recently, gallup did its normal thermometer poll. And for the very first time more people view cuba favorably than unfavorably. Now, of course, the real battleground on the cuba issue is florida where it has high salience for cubanamericans and where they are a large enough proportion of the electorate, about 5 , to make the difference in this swing state. And as we know, elections in florida can be really close sometimes. For republicans in florida, the cubanamerican community has historically been a very solid, consistent base since the 1980s. And the conventional wisdom among democrats, beginning really with bill clinton, was that the right strategy was to try to outflank the republican candidate on the right on the issue of cuba so that cubanamericans then might cast a vote based more on social and economic issues, democrats could pick up at least a reasonable minority of that vote, and that could be the difference. And its strategy that worked for bill clinton in 1996. Its a strategy that Hillary Clinton pursued in 2008. But barack obama took a different approach to the issue. He appealed to the growing moderate segment of the cubanamerican community by promising to repeal limits on Family Travel and remittances and to actually engage with cuba. And it worked. This is as you can see a longterm trends of republican and democratic votes among cubanamericans in south florida. Theres an exit poll analysis and a precinct analysis, and theyre a little bit different in terms of the outcome, but as you can see, the long term trend is clear. In every cycle since 2000, the cubanamerican vote has become less reliably republican. So whats going on here and what does it mean for 2016 . The realignment of the cubanamerican electorate is the result of changing attitudes that are rooted in changing demographics. The floyd International University has been polling in the Community Since 1991 and tracking these attitudes. And their polls show us that more recent arrivals and cubanamericans born in the United States have more moderate views about u. S. Policy than exiles who arrived in the 1960s and the 1970s. And it makes perfect sense. The early arrivals were political refugees who lost everything when they fled cuba. The later arrivals have really been more economically motivated. They still have family on the island. They travel back and forth. They send remittances. So for these recent arrivals, a more normal state to state relationship between cuba and the United States is a good thing because it makes it easier for them to maintain these family ties. And so, we see an evolution in the Florida International poll data on engagement with cuba. You can see a reasonably consistent trend upward. And over the years, a fairly dramatic shift from opposition to any kind of commerce with cuba to engagement to the point that in the most recent 2014 poll, 52 of cubanamericans in south florida favored lifting the embargo against cuba. So now if we look in more detail at that 2014 poll, one of the things we see is that so heres the breakdown on the embargo question. You can see that early arrivals and the generation you can see a generational difference in terms of age. You can see a difference in terms of when people arrived in the United States and then you can see that the older exiles are much more conservative than the younger. Now, not surprisingly, cuba is an issue very salient in this community. 64 of registered voters say its important in deciding who theyre going to vote for. Probably this is the only constituency in the United States where this is such a salient issue. And note that 53 of the Community Say theyre more likely to vote for a candidate thats in favor of engagement. So the moderates groups in the community have over time gradually become a majority. So this is arrivals. And as you can see, over time from these last three censuses, that exiles arriving before 1980, that is to say, the more politically oriented exiles, have fallen from 81 of the community to just 24 in 2010. And obviously, my best estimate is only about 20 of the community today. Now, its taken a long time for this change to actually manifest itself in votes. And thats because, of course, of naturalization. We have been talking about this issue. As you can see, people who came early are almost all u. S. Citizens now, and theyre registered at higher rates an they turn out to vote at fairly high rights. Whereas, people who are more recent arrivals, particularly those who came since the end of the cold war, most of them are still not yet naturalized citizens. One of the things this tells us is that over time this longterm trend in the cubanamerican community becoming more moderate is going to continue as these later arrivals, as more and more of them become naturalized. So and here, finally, you can see that among cubanamerican citizens in florida, the early arrivals are down from 65 in 1980 to just 30 in 2010. And the biggest block now are cubanamericans who are born in the United States. And so, finally, all of these factors together have eroded the traditional alignment of the community with the Republican Party, and you can see it here in the changing registration numbers. So, we can conclude from this that obamas strategy of appealing the moderates in the cubanamerican community has been largely successful and that the cuba issue is not any longer the way it used to be, sort of a third rail of politics in florida. So how have cubanamericans reacted specifically to obamas opening to cuba . And this is a National Poll of cubanamericans done on the anniversary of the announcement, that is to say, in december of 2014. And as you can see, the results favor very closely the florida International University polls. 56 of cubanamericans in favor of obamas opening. And more importantly, again, you can see that support has actually increased over time as weve seen what the normalization looks like in practice. Now, if we disaggregate these results a little bit, you can see that here again by age, the Younger Generation clearly in favor of this, whereas its the older generation that still doesnt like the idea of engaging with cuba. And by decade of arrival, same thing. Those who came early are in disagreement with what obama has done. But interestingly, not by huge numbers. Whereas those who came after 1980 are very much in favor of it. And perhaps most important, cubanamericans born in the United States are overwhelmingly in favor of what obama has done. And as i said earlier, this is now the largest segment of the community and the largest segment of the cubanamerican electorate. And the communities against the embargo. The embargo, of course, requires an act of congress to be removed. So thats going to be an issue in 2017. And the cubanamerican community now is fairly solidly in favor of moving ahead on removing it. So what about the Hispanic Community as a whole . How much difference does the cuba issue make among hispanic voters nationwide . Well, the answer is really not a lot. Generally speaking, hispanic voters are in favor of what the president has done, but its not really all that important an issue for him. Its not salient. Doesnt make much of a difference. But this is interesting. The democrats are more likely, of course, to favor this. But the republican hispanic voters are evenly split on this. So even among hispanic republicans, there is a modest amount of to people who it makes a difference to, theyre evenly split to people who like what obama has done with this opening and people who dont. And then this is for me the most interesting. Cubanamerican voters are actually more favorable and more likely to vote for a candidate in favor of opening to cuba than noncuban hispanic voters. So and if we reverse the question, if you reverse the question and say, are you likely to vote against somebody who opposes obamas opening to cuba, you get almost exactly the same numbers. So this is not a good result for marco rubio or ted cruz heading into the florida primary since they have staked out absolute opposition to obamas opening to cuba. And, of course, the president is going to be going to cuba on march 21st. So the week after the primary. So its likely, i think that cuba will emerge as an issue on the republican side going into the florida primary. It hasnt been an issue thus far. But its going its going to be tricky for cruz and rubio taking on this issue when the community now has moved in a different direction. So donald trump has consistently led in the florida polls. And his more moderate position on cuba and on obamas opening may actually give him an advantage among cubanamerican voters. Once again, denying the conventional wisdom. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, bill. And thanks to all of our panelists so theres quite a bit that one could follow up on in. I want to open it up soon to the audience, questions and perhaps comments. But just before i do that, im interested. The numbers, mark, that you came up, that you had regarding naturalization. And i was reminded of this when i looked at bills slide on the relatively small percentage of post90 or 2000 cubans who had naturalized. What do we know about who is naturalizing and where . Among hispanics . Yeah. Yeah. So when we take a look at the Hispanic Community and those who are in the country legally and eligible to naturalize, youll find that the naturalization rate among cubanamericans is on the order of about 75 or higher. So thats pulling together all of these different immigration groups that leo had up there. But i would also say if you compare it to Central Americans, only about 44 of those in the country legally ultimately naturalize. When you take a look at mexicans, you see only about 36 of those who are in the country legally actually choose to naturalize. So cubanamericans are overrepresented among this population of naturalizing hispanics because, keep in mind, the naturalization process amongst cubans is still going on. Theres a lot of people who have arrived, more recently, for example. Mexicans are somewhat underrepresented. And its an interesting question of why many mexicans choose not to naturalize. Some of them say theyre not interested. Some of them actually return home because they plan to return home at some point. Some also will say things like theyre worried about the cost of the process or theyre worried about taking the test, any test in english, because theyre worried about their english skills. But keep in mind, most of those mexicans who have not naturalized have been here for 20plus years. They were naturalized during the 1986 erca many of this. And they still have not chosen to naturalize. In terms of numbers, mexicans are still the biggest part of it but theyre underrepresented given what you would