THE HILL: Puerto Rican crisis roils 2016 race.

Years of economic decline has driven hundreds of thousands of island residents to the US mainland, and is upending the political calculus on the presidential trail.

Puerto Rican residents cannot vote for the president in the general election, but can cast votes in primary contests.

The hotly contested Republican primary now has every candidate scrambling for whatever delegates they can find, leaving Puerto Rico’s oft-ignored primary on March 6 a unique opportunity for a pickup.

Even more significantly, a huge chunk of the Puerto Ricans that fled the island resettled in Florida, presenting a new voting bloc in that critical swing state.
“Over half are going to one state, and that’s Florida. This will have an impact on the primaries and subsequent November elections,” said Amilcar Antonio Barreto, an associate professor at Northeastern University and an expert on Puerto Rican politics. “They’re a big wild card.”

Puerto Ricans occupy a unique space in U.S. politics. While on the island, they are residents of a commonwealth and cannot ultimately vote for the president. But they are also American citizens, and free to move to the mainland whenever they want, where they can vote in the general election.

And hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have made that choice, as a massive debt crisis is forcing the island to ask Congress to let it declare bankruptcy on some of its bonds and made providing basic public services a significant challenge.

Stay tuned.