Every recent poll of Americans, including surveys from independent pollsters, shows a majority of Americans favors lifting the U.S. embargo -- with even bigger majorities favoring an end to other embargo-era policies. Americans want to lift the embargo by a margin of 52-to-32 percent, according to a Cuba Policy Foundation poll in 2001 conducted by a nonpartisan, independent polling firm. By a 63-to-33 percent margin, Americans believe lifting the embargo would be the most effective way to bring democracy to Cuba. And by a 63-to-24 percent margin, Americans want the U.S. to start a formal dialogue with Cuba now.

Support for important incremental changes in U.S. policy is even stronger. Overwhelming majorities want to lift the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba (67-to-24 percent); to allow American companies to sell food to Cuba (71-to-22 percent); and to allow American companies to sell medicine to Cuba (76-to-17 percent).

Email the Cuba Policy Foundation at alexander@cubafoundation.org for copies of the national poll. The Cuba Policy Foundation also commissioned statewide polls in 2001 of Florida, Texas and Louisiana. All three statewide polls, including the Florida poll, show overwhelming support for changing U.S. policies toward Cuba, equal to or greater than the overwhelming national support for changing U.S. policies. The Cuba Policy Foundation has those statewide polls available as well.

And contrary to the myth perpetuated by pro-embargo lobbyists, Cuban-Americans in South Florida want at least some form of a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba. According to a 2000 Florida International University poll, a majority of Cuban-Americans living in Miami-Dade County – by a 52-48 percent margin – believe the U.S. should allow American companies to conduct at least some business with Cuba. By a 53-47 percent margin, a majority of Miami-Dade Cuban-Americans want the U.S. to lift the ban on travel to Cuba completely. Click here to see the 2000 FIU poll.

Even clearer majorities of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade, according to the FIU poll, want American companies to be allowed to sell food to Cuba (56-to-44 percent) and medicine to Cuba (66-to-34 percent).

In perhaps the FIU poll's most telling statistic, Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade believe the U.S. embargo against Cuba has failed -- by an overwhelming 84-to-26 percent margin.

More recently, in February 2003, the changing attitudes of Cuban-Americans toward the embargo has been demonstrated by polls conducted for the Miami Herald.  For the Miami Herald poll results and analysis of how exiles are shifting their hard-line position, click here.