“Victory, Victoria, Triunfo, Exito = Florida”

Despite being sidetracked by the false victory of Rick Santorum among 120,000 caucus attendees in Iowa, and in South Carolina where Republicans surprised Newt Gingrich with a victory, Florida Republicans responded to Mitt Romney’s “shock and awe” television ad bombardment and Newt Gingrich’s legendary personal baggage by rejecting Gingrich with gusto.

Most savvy political observers predicted Romney would win Florida so the victory wasn’t any great surprise except to die-hard Gingrich supporters. Nonetheless, there are surprises in Floridians and how they view what many consider to be a major issue. In reality, the issue of illegal aliens turned out to be a non-issue with only 3% of those voting thinking illegal aliens is an important issue.

The Exit Polls conducted by the National Election Pool asked its voting respondents to rank illegal aliens as an issue and only 3% thought it was an issue.

Hispanics/Latinos comprise up to 14% of Florida Republicans, thus, they are very important in a Republican Primary and generally hand Republicans the state in general elections. Nationally, they aren’t a large percentage of the Republican electorate because most tend to identify as Democrats. However, whenever 35% or more Hispanics have voted Republican in Presidential elections, Republicans have won.

Hispanics mostly voted for Obama in 2008 but still gave John McCain 31%. White Catholics gave their majority to Obama; he was the first Democrat to get those votes Since Johnson in 1964. Both groups will be studied closely this November for if a few percentage points that Obama received from these two groups forsake him this time, Obama loses.

Florida Hispanic Republicans are different than those nationally. For example, Puerto Ricans and Cubans live and vote in Florida in about equal numbers with Puerto Ricans usually voting Democrat and Cuban Americans usually voting ...