Replication Data for: Pushing on an Open Door? Ethnic Foreign Policy Lobbies and the Cuban American Case

For three decades, the Cuban American lobby was widely regarded as one of the most powerful ethnic foreign policy lobbies in the United States, second only to the lobby in support of Israel. Well-organized, wealthy, single-minded, and strategically concentrated in the key electoral states of Florida and New Jersey, the Cuban American lobby dominated the issue field, opposing any opening to Cuba. But was the lobby’s success due principally to its own strengths, or to a fortuitous political opportunity structure? Did its sheer political muscle enable it to force its way into Washington’s corridors of power, or was it actually “pushing on an open door”? This article traces the Cuban American lobby’s meteoric ascendancy in the 1980s, its gradual decline in the 2000s, and its partial revival after the election of Donald Trump. By examining variation in the lobby’s influence over time, along with variation in the factors that scholars have theorized as sources of ethnic interest group influence, we shed new light on the relative importance of these causal factors and whether those related to the lobby’s characteristics weigh more heavily than those associated with the political opportunity structure it faces.