Puerto Ricans who were displaced due to Hurricane Maria last year and resettled in Florida have not registered to vote en masse, political analyst Bill Schneider told The Hill on Wednesday.
"There was a lot of optimism among Democrats that with the large increase in the Puerto Rican population fleeing the results of the hurricane" that many would register in significant numbers in the key battleground state of Florida, Schneider said.
“But they haven't done that, I think in part, because a lot of them may be expecting to go back to Puerto Rico, and they're not setting out roots in Florida," he said.
More than 100,000 residents in Puerto Rico fled to the U.S. mainland after Hurricane Maria hit the island last September.
Data, however, indicates there has been no increase in registrations.
Some 343,000 people registered to vote in Florida, with 18 percent being Hispanic, in the nine months before the hurricane, The Washington Post reported.
In the nine months after the hurricane, however, only 326,000 people registered to vote, with just 21 percent of them being Hispanic.
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