How a surge in Puerto Rican voters is changing Florida politics

The road to political victory in Florida is not just a metaphor, it's a place: Interstate 4, the busy highway that cuts across the vote-heavy heart of the state from Tampa to Daytona Beach.

And the I-4 corridor, as it's called, now runs through a swing-vote region undergoing significant demographic change.

Puerto Ricans have been migrating by the thousands to the area — part of the largest exodus from their island territory to the mainland since World War II. They currently make up about 10 percent of Central Florida's population, and their numbers continue to grow.

A Pew Research Center report released in August shows that Orange County alone was home to nearly 150,000 Puerto Ricans in 2010, up from 86,583 a decade earlier, out of a total population of 1.4 million. The surge pushed it to No. 3 in a ranking of U.S. counties according to Puerto Rican population; only Brooklyn and the Bronx ranked higher.

"The I-4 corridor is the key to winning Florida: Win the area and you win the election," says Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, pointing out that roughly 45 percent of the state's registered voters live in the Tampa and Orlando media markets.

Yet some Floridians, including politicians, are still trying to figure out how to talk about the newcomers. Because many Puerto Ricans work at Disney World, Floridians dub them "Disney Ricans" or "Mickey Ricans," labels they don't find amusing.

 cafe surfinista was here. click to enlarge.