Cuba poll won’t change U.S. policy

Posted on Wednesday, 02.12.14

Cuba poll won't change U.S. policy
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
AOPPENHEIMER@MIAMIHERALD.COM

A new poll showing that a majority of Miamians support a normalization
of U.S. ties with Cuba has drawn a lot of excitement in the media, as
the poll's organizers and many pundits predicted that the survey will
have a big impact on U.S. policy toward the island. Unfortunately, I
don't share their optimism.

After reading the poll's fine-print and talking with some Washington
insiders, I'm not that sure that Washington — especially the U.S.
Congress, which holds the key to making major changes in U.S. policy
toward the island — will be much moved by the survey's results.

The poll, released earlier this week by the Atlantic Council, found that
56 percent of Americans — and, surprisingly, 64 percent of Miamians —
favor changing the current U.S. policy on the island.

"This survey shows that the majority of Americans on both sides of the
aisle are ready for a policy shift," say Peter Schechter and Jason
Marczak, the top officials of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of
the Atlantic Council, which commissioned the survey. "Most surprisingly,
Floridians are even more supportive than an already supportive nation to
incrementally or fully change course."

Problem is, we've heard this many times before. And, like other similar
polls that showed an increased support for easing U.S. economic
sanctions on the island, the Atlantic Council survey was conducted among
the general population — not among likely voters. That's a big
difference, which Washington politicians look at very closely.

In 2009, a poll by Bendixen and Associates found that only 47 percent of
Cuban-Americans supported the U.S. embargo on the island, down from 82
percent in 1992, and from 62 percent in 2005. But again, those were
polls conducted among the general population, not among likely voters.

On Wednesday, I called Schechter and Marczak and asked them about the
poll's methodology. They confirmed to me that, in fact, it is a poll of
the general population, but emphasized that more than 90 percent of
those surveyed — both nationally and in Florida — are registered voters.
Still, the poll did not ask questions that would give us a hint about
whether these registered voters are likely voters.

"If we were running an election, we would filter by registered voters,
or by people who intend to vote," said Schechter. "But this is an issue
campaign, and when you do an issue campaign, you try to poll everybody."

But both Republican Cuban-American legislators, who tend to be the
staunchest supporters of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, and their democratic
counterparts say the poll is not likely to change their pro-embargo
stand, nor that of Congress.

"I don't see the poll as changing the public policy of the Congress of
the United States," Sen. Bob Menendez, head of the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, told me in a telephone interview. "I see it as
another expression of those who want to change the policy to try to
create an environment in which they hope the policy will change. But
it's wishful thinking."

Congressman Joe Garcia, D-Miami, a strong supporter of President Barack
Obama's policy to expand travel and remittances to Cuba, told me in a
separate interview that the new poll "is meaningless."

"We have seen this before," Garcia said. He noted that the embargo is an
emotional issue for many Cuban-American voters, and that those who
support it tend to vote on it, while those who oppose it tend to cast
their votes based on other issues.

Garcia added, "There is no will to take this thing on in Congress,
because it doesn't add any votes. And politics is a game of addition,
not of subtraction."

My opinion: The Atlantic Council poll is a serious poll done by serious
people, but I doubt that it will have a major political impact.

U.S. politicians will not change their minds, because — as Garcia says —
opposing the embargo does not add any votes. And Cuban politicians are
not interested in a normalization of ties either, because they need to
maintain the fiction that they are at "war" with the United States in
order to stay in power indefinitely.

I would like Obama to continue expanding travel in both directions,
because Cubans who come to Miami almost always go back to the island
with a more favorable view of the United States than they came with. And
Obama should also, by executive actions, expand trade with Cuban
businesses that are not run by the island's dictatorship.

But I don't expect much more than that to happen until there are signs
of serious change in Cuba.

Source: Andres Oppenheimer: Cuba poll won't change U.S. policy - Andres
Oppenheimer - MiamiHerald.com -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/12/3930892/andres-oppenheimer-cuba-poll-wont.html