A new survey of Miami-Dade County voters released Monday asks whether the U.S. military should force Venezuela’s dictator from power — and many may be surprised by the response, given the county's large and anti-regime, pro-Trump Venezuelan diaspora.
The poll by the Democrat-leaning Miami firm Bendixen & Amandi covers a variety of hot-button issues in Miami-Dade. The county is home to the U.S.’s largest Venezuelan expat community, so it asks residents if President Donald Trump should use the U.S. military to oust the brutal dictatorship of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
A plurality — 42% — said No, while only 35% said Yes. (The remaining 23% were undecided.)
That finding matters because, while the U.S. has been making controversial military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela in recent weeks, Trump is now making noise about possible military strikes against drug traffickers inside Venezuela.
Because the Trump administration has designated the socialist Maduro regime as the head of Venezuelan drug-trafficking — Maduro, in fact, has been indicted in the U.S. for that crime — such an operation could be geared not just toward drug interdiction, but regime removal.
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Most of Miami-Dade's Venezuelan voters went for Trump in last year's presidential election. The diaspora often voices support for invading Venezuela — a call that finds sympathy among other exiles like Cubans, the county's largest Latino population and one that hopes to dislodge the communist dictatorship in Cuba.
As a result, the fact that there is more opposition to the idea than support in Miami-Dade suggests Trump lacks national backing, too — as some polls have already found.
A YouGov poll released last month found that while Americans are largely split on Trump's large deployment of U.S. military assets to the Caribbean for counternarcotics operations, a majority reject a military invasion of Venezuela are a military strike to overthrow Maduro and his dictatorship.
The Bendixen & Amandi poll shows 59% of Republicans support using military force against the Venezuelan regime, while 57% oppose it.
The striking result, however, was that a majority of independents oppose it as well.
