ABSTRACT
Interest in how U.S. ethnic minority voters interpret political news and information has increased as their percentages in the electorate and polarization in the voting population have become more pronounced. Donald Trump’s much-improved 2020 performance in minority-majority Miami-Dade County, Florida, offers a window into how the Cuban American community received and made sense of campaign news and information. In our qualitative, non-representative sample study, Cuban immigrants and their offspring offered interpretations of the candidates that aligned with their preferred sources of news and information. Based on these alignments, we argue that Trump was more successful in 2020, at least in Greater Miami, because his campaign did a better job of connecting with Cubans who consider themselves conservative Americans. In revealing the normative origins of polarized candidate constructions within the Cuban voting community, we gain a better understanding of interpretations of political journalism and commentary and a nationally important electorate where ideological views and values trumped attempts to prime traumatic exile memories.
