Americans’ Opinions of FEMA’s Responses to Alabama and Puerto Rico

On March 3, 2019, a series of tornadoes hit towns across Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. The worst one decimated a number of communities around Beauregard, Alabama, claiming 23 lives and injuring close to 100.  The next morning President Trump tweeted:

FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes. @GovernorKayIvey, one of the best in our Country, has been so informed. She is working closely with FEMA (and me!).

Needless to say, President Trump’s words angered many. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should be impartial when it reacts to a natural disaster, the tweet suggests that the President affects the amount of assistance FEMA provides. Has Trump be playing favorites, favoring red states over blue states? Have his negative views of Puerto Rico explain why the federal government has been slow at disbursing the funds appropriated to finance the island’s recovery?

This is likely to become an issue in next year’s presidential elections. For instance, both Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro have recently visited Puerto Rico to highlight the Trump administration’s “‘disrespectful’ treatment”  of the island’s 3.3 million U.S. citizens. Do Americans share Warren’s or Castro’s views?

The most recent Economist/YouGov Poll (March 10-12, 2019) asked its panel the following question: “Do you think the federal government was more responsive to the tornadoes in Alabama or the hurricane that struck Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands?”

Sadly, but not surprisingly, many Americans think that the federal government has favored Alabama over Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Could this be problematic for the White House? A close look at the survey’s crosstabs show that 66% of Democrats believe the federal government favored Alabama over the other U.S. territories, while only 32% of independent and 28% of Republicans share this opinion.

The survey also asked respondents to evaluate the President Trump’s and the federal government’s response to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. This is the fifth time this survey posed this question, allowing us to track Americans’ attitudes for the past 18 months.

The numbers have not fluctuated too much since YouGov asked this question in last year’s surveys. As noted above, partisanship determines how negatively respondents feel about Trump’s handling of the response. Thus, 80% of Democrats disapprove of his response, while 77% of Republicans approve of his performance. Independents, an important voting group, are more divided with 31% approving and 39% disapproving of President Trump’s actions.

Respondents were also asked to rate the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria.

As noted above, there is not too much change in the last few months. Republicans are more likely to have positive views of the government’s response, while Democrats are more critical. Today, 43% of independents tend to be critical, though this represents a 4% drop from September 2018.

How salient is this issue? Will it affect the 2020 presidential elections? Right now, other issues will likely overshadow the Trump administration’s treatment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. But this issue will prove be problematic with President Trump in Florida, a state he needs to win if he hopes to win reelection.

About the Author: Carlos L. Yordán is an associate professor of political science and international relations and the director of the Semester on the United Nations at Drew University in Madison, NJ. He is currently researching US-Puerto Rico relations in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Follow him in Twitter: @cyordan or @pr_datalab.

 

Did the Trump Administration Favor Texas and Florida Over Puerto Rico? FEMA’s Data Says…

Please note that I am slowly transitioning this blog to my own personal website. 

In a letter to President Donald Trump, dated September 19, 2018, Ricardo Rossello, Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood governor, noted that:

“The ongoing and historic inequalities resulting from Puerto Rico’s territorial status have been exacerbated by a series of decisions by the federal government that have slowed our post-disaster recovery, compared to what has happened in other jurisdictions stateside.”

Earlier in September, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo argued that:

“President Trump never tried to help Puerto Rico. Florida got attention, Texas got attention, and Puerto Rico got the short end of the stick.”

To continue reading, please click HERE.

Fact-Checking Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s Claims on Statehood for Puerto Rico

This post was published in Pasquines on October 4, 2018.

At the end of September, Newsweek’s Robert Valencia interviewed Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood governor, Ricardo Rosselló. They met a few days after President Donald Trump told Geraldo Rivera that he did not support Puerto Rico’s statehood aspirations. The president also blamed the island’s recovery on Carmen Yulin Cruz, the Mayor of San Juan, and other “incompetent” leaders. Rosselló used the interview to make a case for why Puerto Rico should be admitted as the nation’s 51st state.

In making his case for statehood,  Rosselló made two problematic statements that require further scrutiny….

To keep reading, please click here.

Does Donald Trump Care about Puerto Ricans Affected by Hurricane Maria?

Author’s Note: In the next weeks, the Puerto Rico Data Lab will be transitioning to a new site. In the meantime, I will be publishing my thoughts on Puerto Rico in both platforms.

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico’s southeast coast on September 20, 2017. Despite all the ups and downs associated with the island’s slow recovery after the storm, one thing seems to pretty steady. President Donald Trump and his White House have been arduously working to make sure that Hurricane Maria does not become the President’s Katrina.

Many experts believe that the Bush administration’s poor response to Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans hurt President George W. Bush’s approval ratings and undermined his leadership on domestic issues.

Once it became clear that Hurricane Florence was going to hit the southeast coast of the United States, President Trump knew that he had to go on the offensive and show that his administration was ready to respond to the storm’s future impact. On September 12, 2018, Trump tweeted:

We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan). We are ready for the big one that is coming!

Other tweets followed, reassuring Americans that FEMA and first-responders “are supplied and ready” and asking those people in the path of the storm to “follow local evacuation orders”.

President Trump’s views on Puerto Rico’s recovery after Hurricane Maria set off a media storm. Rather than ignoring the criticisms, he decided to double-down. In one of his tweets, he cited Fox Business News Lou Dobb’s view that: “The people of Puerto Rico have one of the most corrupt governments in our country”,alleging that the island’s slow recovery rested in the hands of the local government. He then had the audacity to  question the validity of a new study conducted by George Washington University on behalf of the Government of Puerto Rico that estimates the death-toll associated with Hurricane Maria was close to 3,000 lives.

What do Americans think of President Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria? Do they think that he cares for to needs of the victims of this Category 4 storm?

The recent Economist/YouGov poll (September 16-18, 2018) can help us answers these two questions. It is worth noting that this polling firm has asked the same questions three times since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, helping us understand whether American public opinion has shifted in this time period.

These questions were first asked on October 1-3, 2017 as President Trump visited Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to survey the hurricane’s damages. The questions were fielded again on June 3-5, 2017 after the publication of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that questioned the Government of Puerto Rico’s mortality data following Hurricane Maria and estimated that hurricane-related deaths stood between 793 and 8,498.

Let’s look at respondents’ answers to the first question.

It seems that Americans are slightly more critical of the president’s handling of Hurricane Maria. Have his tweets hurt his political standing among his supporters or independent voters?

It is worth noting that President Trump did not address Puerto Rico’s slow recovery or the controversy regarding the Puerto Rico Government’s inability to account for all the hurricane-related deaths. This could explain why his political standing with his supporters may have declined in early June 2018. The important finding is that his base thinks that his response to Hurricane Maria was the right one.

Given that the midterm elections are around the corner, it is important to consider whether independents approve or disapprove of the president’s response to Hurricane Maria..

While independents are more critical today of President Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria, it is worth emphasizing that his standing has slightly improved with this voting group since June.

Needless to say, the president’s strongest critics identify as Democrats. In October 2017, 54% of Democrats disapproved of his handling of the situation increasing to 73% today.

The Economist/YouGov Poll also asked respondents the following question: “How much do you think Donald Trump cares about the needs and problems of people affected by Hurricane Maria?” This question, as I noted in a previous post, is basically asking respondents to look past policy issues and to judge his moral character and his empathy towards others.

It is clear that while 46% of Americans approve of his handling of Hurricane Maria, many question his empathy towards the victims of the storm. This is even true among his strongest supporters.

Today 6 in 10 Democrats believe he does not care “about the needs and problems of people affected by Hurricane Maria”, while 37% of independents feel the same way.

Could these attitudes affect President Trump’s job approval? It is difficult to say. So far, it seems that while Trump’s supporters have problems with his moral character, they are not ready to abandon him at this point. We even see this attitudes with some members of Puerto Rico’s New Progressive Party (NPP), which currently controls Puerto Rico’s governorship and the legislature. While many Puerto Ricans were angered by Trump’s tweets, many of the NPP leaders who identify as Republicans publicly defended the president’s response.

So far, it is difficult to say whether or not Americans believe that Hurricane Maria is Trump’s Katrina or whether the island’s slow recovery will hurt his future electoral prospects. What is clear is that many Americans still support Trump, though many do question his character. While this may seem strange, it is important to remember that as electoral races across the country start to intensify, the American public will become more polarized. Thus, we should expect that Trump’s support among Republicans and among his more ardent supporters to grow, regardless of how they feel about his moral deficiencies.

 

 

U.S. Television News Networks’ Coverage of Puerto Rico of Harvard-Funded Study on Mortality Rates after Hurricane Maria

On May 29, 2018, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article that estimated that 4,645 Puerto Ricans died because of Hurricane Maria. Although the study’s authors do not claim that 4,645 died because of the hurricane, the media, by in large, reported it this way. As I noted in a previous post, because of their survey’s margin of error, the authors estimate that deaths connected to Hurricane Maria could be as low as 793 and as high as 8,498. Thus, the 4,645 is the median between these two estimates.

The study, which was funded by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, reopened a long-standing debate on the Government of Puerto Rico’s inability to account for all the deaths associated with Hurricane Maria. The fact that the study’s estimates were higher than the official death count or other estimates shocked many Puerto Ricans.

In social media, people have adopted different avatars that make reference to the 4,645 estimated deaths. Many Puerto Ricans have used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share their stories of loved ones who died as a consequence of Hurricane Maria. In what NPR’s Adrian Florido described as an “impromptu memorial” , thousands of pairs of shoes were placed in front of Puerto Rico’s capitol building, symbolizing the number of people who have not been accounted in the government’s official tally, which today stands at 64. During the weekend, many Puerto Ricans visited the building to honor those who lost their lives and to protest the Rosselló administration’s lack of transparency and its mishandling of this controversy.

Even though the Harvard-funded study’s effects on the island’s politics was covered by many U.S. news organizations, some critics find that the issue did not receive the coverage it deserved. For instance, James Downie writing in the Washington Post’s Post Partisan blog noted that the story was not discussed in the Sunday news shows. Similarly, Kate Sullivan and Lis Power of Media Matters showed that the Harvard-funded study received less airtime than Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet, which led ABC to cancel her show.

While the critics are correct, it is important to highlight that many news networks did mobilize their resources to cover the fallout of the Harvard-study in the island. For example, CBS News sent David Begnaud to Puerto Rico, while CNN sent John Sutter and Leyla Santiago and NBC deployed Gabe Gutierrez. These journalists have covered the humanitarian crisis caused by Hurricane Maria, visiting the island several times in the last eight months.

So how much media coverage did Puerto Rico earn in the past two weeks? Which U.S. news network devoted the most airtime to any issue connected to Puerto Rico?

To answer these questions, I used the GDELT Project’s TV Explorer application (version 2.0) to measure how much airtime the major U.S. TV news networks devoted to issues connected to Puerto Rico. The application aggregates data from the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive. My analysis covers the period between May 21, 2018 and June 3, 2018. I decided to explore a period of two weeks to get a rough idea of how much coverage Puerto Rico issues earn in U.S. TV news networks.

The image included with this post is a wordcloud of the top words associated with this coverage. It clearly shows that these words are connected to the fallout of the Harvard-funded study.

The next bar graph compares the overall coverage of news connected to Puerto Rico across the main U.S. news networks.

On average, Univision devoted the most airtime to Puerto Rico in this time period, followed by CNN, MSNC and PBS. Not surprisingly, the story did not earn too much interest from FoxNews.

The next charts help us visualize each news network’s coverage of stories connected to Puerto Rico for the two weeks period. For ease of reading, I have divided these networks into three subgroups. The first subgroup includes CNN, MSNBC and FoxNews, which are the main U.S. cable news networks. The second one looks at the affiliated TV stations news networks that broadcast in English, which include: ABC News, CBS News and NBC News. I also added PBS to this subgroup. The final subgroup represent the country’s main Spanish news networks, Univision and Telemundo.

This line graph clearly shows the impact the Harvard-funded study had on the coverage of news stories connected to Puerto Rico. And while MSNBC devoted more airtime to the story early on, CNN’s coverage increased over time. This may be connected to Anderson Cooper’s interview of Governor Ricardo Rosselló regarding this controversy – an issue a I covered in my last post.

The next line graph shows that PBS devoted the most airtime to the Harvard-funded study among the non-cable news networks. However, its coverage, like MSNBC’s decreased quickly. CBS News, on the other hand, had the most consistent coverage in the days following the publication of the Harvard-funded study.

Surprisingly, ABC’s news coverage was pretty low. Could this be connected to the fallout of Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet or is this part of a trend that could be observed over a longer period of time? This is an interesting question, but for now I will give ABC the benefit of the doubt. After all, Barr’s sitcom aired in ABC.

In terms of the Spanish news networks, it is not clear why Univision dedicated more airtime to the Harvard-funded study than Telemundo. But it is interesting to see that Telemundo’s coverage spiked during the weekend, as Univision’s coverage declined. Could it be that Telemundo was interested in the “impromptu memorial” created by Puerto Ricans in front of the island’s capitol building.

In the next days, I will look at how the U.S. print and online media covered news connected to Puerto Rico during this time period. This will help us make sense how much coverage the Harvard-funded study received in the U.S. mainland. For now, it is interesting to see how U.S. TV news networks covered the fallout of the Harvard-funded study on Puerto Rico’s excess mortality following Hurricane Maria.