‘Island of garbage’: Why Puerto Ricans matter to the 2024 US election

Days before a knife-edge United States presidential vote, the race to the White House has been embroiled in a controversy over remarks at a Donald Trump campaign event in New York City that has sparked accusations of racism.

Stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe on Sunday provoked a hail of anger when he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” in a warm-up set at Madison Square Garden for the Republican presidential candidate as he campaigns against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Hinchcliffe, 40, also quipped that Latinos “love making babies” before likening their presence to an “invasion of the country”.

Enraged voters, politicians and Latino celebrities denounced the Trump campaign for a rally that included racially charged, offensive remarks against Latino communities as well as Jews and Black people.

Residents of Puerto Rico, a US island territory in the Caribbean, cannot vote in the presidential election, but Puerto Ricans living in the 50 US states could shape the race in key battleground states.

The Trump campaign quickly distanced itself from Hinchcliffe but stopped short of condemning his remarks.

Senior Trump adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement that the joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.

Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the comedian made a “joke in poor taste” but the incident was being blown out of proportion.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said people should “take a chill pill” after the angry reaction and argued that people were “getting so offended at every little thing”.

Hinchcliffe defended himself, saying his critics had “no sense of humour”. “Wild that a vice presidential candidate [Democrat Tim Walz] would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist,” he wrote on X.

“I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone. …Watch the whole set.”

Vice President Harris pounced at the remarks, calling them “nonsense”. “I think last night, Donald Trump’s event in Madison Square Garden really highlighted a point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign,” she told a pool of reporters.

“He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country.”

Walz, Harris’s running mate, said people in Puerto Rico were US citizens, “pay tax and they serve in the military at almost a higher rate than anybody else”.

President Joe Biden said the rally had been “simply embarrassing”. “It’s beneath any president, but that’s what we’re getting used to. That’s why this election is so important,” the Democrat said.

How big is the Puerto Rican vote?

The Puerto Rican community has a large presence in battleground states that could determine the outcome of the presidential election.

More Puerto Ricans live in the US than on the Caribbean island itself, which has a population of just over 3.2 million. Its residents live a political paradox, enjoying US citizenship but lacking full political representation.

The US took Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and other colonial possessions from Spain during the brief Spanish-American War in 1898. The first large wave of migration of Puerto Ricans to the US occurred after World War II to ease labour shortages on the mainland.

Today, about 5.9 million people identify as ethnically Puerto Rican, according to 2022 estimates from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, making up the second-largest population of Hispanic origin in the US after Mexicans.

How significant is the Puerto Rican vote in battleground states?

Seven battleground states are expected to determine the outcome of the election, including Pennsylvania, which counts about 486,000 people of Puerto Rican origin – equivalent to about 3.7 percent of the state’s population.

According to an average of nationwide polls compiled by the FiveThirtyEight website, Harris was ahead of Trump by 1.4 percentage points as of Sunday, but the presidential contest is even closer in battleground states. In Pennsylvania – the swing state with the most Electoral College votes, 19 – Trump leads Harris by just 0.2 percentage points.

Steve Herman, chief national correspondent at Voice of America, said the vote in Pennsylvania would be “absolutely critical”.

“Pennsylvania is a bellwether state, and it’s very unlikely that either candidate will win enough electoral votes to become president without [it],” Herman told Al Jazeera.

“It’s possible that a few Puerto Ricans who were planning on voting for Trump would now be so angry that they would vote for Harris or not vote at all.”

He added that a few thousand votes could be sufficient to swing the election result. “That’s just how tight this is,” he said.

But it isn’t just Pennsylvania. Georgia, where Trump leads Harris by less than 2 percentage points, is home to more than 131,000 Puerto Ricans, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at New York’s Hunter College. That’s more than 1 percent of Georgia’s population. Puerto Ricans also constitute more than 1 percent of the population of North Carolina, another swing state.

What about non-battleground states?

Puerto Rican votes will be relevant also in non-battleground states. Florida has the highest share of voters of Puerto Rican origin at more than 1.2 million – equivalent to about 5.6 percent of the state’s total population, according to 2022 data from the American Community Survey.

Connecticut, home to about 299,000 people of Puerto Rican origin, has the highest share with 8.3 percent of that state’s population. In Massachusetts, 326,000 people identify as Puerto Rican – 4.7 percent of the population.

New York state is home to more than a million Puerto Ricans.

The comments about Puerto Rico are reminiscent of Trump’s “s***hole countries” remark in 2018 when the then-president criticised immigration from El Salvador, Haiti and the African continent.

The jibe also came after Trump made a similar comment last week, calling the US the “garbage can for the world” while discussing immigration.

Trump has been known to make disparaging remarks during his calls for mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

Hinchcliffe’s have also triggered a backlash from several Puerto Rican music icons, including Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and Bad Bunny.

“This is what they think of us,” Martin wrote to his 18 million followers on Instagram. “Vote for @kamalaharris.”

Herman said the election is now all about turnout. “It’s about getting your supporters to cast a ballot,” he said. “A comedian insulting Puerto Ricans in a warm-up act could just be enough votes to swing things.”