If true, this is good to know, but are you telling us that Puertorriquenos split their votes and gave Mel Martinez a majority?
This would be the first I've ever heard about PR voting patterns. And Obama's people don't know this, or somehow have an idea they'll vote 'Rat instead?
In 2004, exit polls showed that Puerto Ricans in Central Florida gave President Bush 50% of the vote. Around 1/3 of Puerto Rican voters in Central Florida were actually born and raised in the U.S. mainland (mostly NYC, Chicago, NJ and CT) and we can assume that they voted for Kerry and Castor, so the PR-born Puerto Ricans must have given President Bush and Mel Martinez comfortable majorities. Michael Barone poits to the Puerto Rican vote as the key to Bush carrying Osceola County in 2004 after having done poorly there in 2000.
The Obama Administration has nothing to do wuth the Puerto Rico plebiscite bill, which is a continuation of a congressional effort that was started by Republicans in the 1990s (and more generally, of the 112-year-old statehood movement in Puerto Rico). Obama is less supportive of statehood than any president since at least before Ronald Reagan (part of the reason why Obama got trounced by Hillary by like 80%-20% in the PR Democrat primary), and the bill (and statehood) is opposed by Obama’s “Puerto Rico guy” Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Chicago. But, yes, many Democrats ignorantly assume that a State of Puerto Rico would vote heavily Democrat because that’s how their cousins vote in The Bronx.
The truth is that no one knows how PR would vote were it a state, but the Louisiana electorate (socially conservative, economically populist, pro-military, protectionist, tolerant of a certain amount of corruption) is probably the most simar to the electorate in PR. It should be noted that Louisiana is a swing state that voted for the winner in every presidential election from 1972 to 2004.