The 1996 election, more than any other to date, may come to be viewed as a harbinger of enhanced cooperation among Cuban Americans and other Latino groups in fashioning political agendas that are in some important respects unified. Notwithstanding the overall "mixed message" derived from interpreting the role played by Latino voters in the 1996 election (see Chapter 1), three particularly important observations stand as indicators of the potential for greater political convergence among Cubans and other Latino groups on at least some significant points of domestic policy. First, although they still cast a very slight plurality of their votes for Republican candidate Bob Dole, far more Cuban Americans voted Democratic in the 1996 race than in any previous presidential election. Although this should not be interpreted as the beginnings of a traditional realignment of group interests around a different party, Cuban American voters in Florida were not nearly as at variance with other Latino voters in the casting of their ballots as has been evident in previous elections (Seib 1996).
