WASHINGTON (AP) — Porto Rico will hold a Democratic presidential primary on Sunday, which will be the only opportunity most registered voters on the island will have to officially weigh in on the race for the White House.
Like other U.S. territories, voters in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the general election, but can participate in presidential primaries and send delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer.
President Joe Biden has already won enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination and faces minimal opposition in Sunday’s vote. The Democratic primary was originally scheduled for March 17, but party officials moved the event and implemented cost-saving measures, such as reducing the number of polling places, once it became clear that Biden had locked in the nomination. The party estimates the primary reduction will cost less than $60,000, down from the roughly $1 million the State Election Commission had initially budgeted. Puerto Rico Republicans abandoned their traditional primaries and preferred rewarded their 23 delegates to the old President Donald Trump Sunday in a caucus-style vote during which approximately 77% of the 1,340 eligible party officials participated. Trump was the only candidate on the ballot.
Although people in Puerto Rico cannot vote for president in November, they could still influence the Electoral College’s calculations. In the 2020 general election, both the Biden and Trump campaigns had awareness efforts in Puerto Rico with the hope that the voters of this country would in turn influence their friends and relatives on the American continent.
Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Puerto Rico to tout the Biden administration’s record on disaster relief and to attend a fundraiser. The trip came days after Biden launched a new effort to target Latino voters.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data in 2023, approximately 5.8 million Puerto Ricans live in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. About 21% of Puerto Ricans in the United States reside in Florida, followed by 17% in New York and 8% each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Trump carried Florida by a margin of 3 percentage points in 2020 and 1 percentage point in 2016. The races were even closer in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 1 percentage point in 2020 and Trump by less than one percentage point in 2016.
Biden won the 2020 Puerto Rico primary, which was postponed twice at the very end of the Democratic primary calendar in mid-July due to the coronavirus pandemic. He received 62% of the vote, against Bernie Sanders, who received 15% of the vote, and Michael Bloomberg, who received 14%. Hillary Clinton had a similar result in 2016 with 61% of the vote to Sanders’ 38%. Clinton also won Puerto Rico in 2008, when the territory was one of the last places to vote in the marathon nomination battle between the former U.S. secretary of state and then-Sen. Barack Obama.
Here’s a sneak peek of what to expect…
