A majority of Cuban Americans supports new Cuba travel restrictions, but younger people and post-1980 émigrés are less likely to back the policy.

BY ADJOA ADOFO

South Florida's Cuban Americans are divided along generational lines over President Bush's new restrictions on travel to Cuba, according to a poll.

Cubans who came to the United States after 1980 and younger U.S.-born Cubans are most likely to disapprove of Bush's policy, said Antonio Gonzalez, a proponent of unrestricted travel and president of the William C. Velásquez Institute-Miriam Group, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Latino think tank that conducted the poll.

''For the purpose of politics, this is a danger signal for the president,'' Gonzalez said at a press conference Friday. ``There is a big group thinking about re-evaluating their partisanship because of these measures.''

59 PERCENT APPROVE

Fifty-nine percent of the survey's 812 respondents said they approve of the new policy, which reduces visits to Cuba from once a year to once every three years. The policy also limits the duration of visits, how much money a U.S. tourist can spend there and which relatives a traveler can visit.

The poll shows that 37 percent of respondents do not back the president's move.

Forty-seven percent of respondents who arrived after 1980 said Cuban Americans should be able to visit relatives in Cuba without restrictions, while only 27 percent of those who arrived before 1980 had the same sentiment.

The telephone survey was conducted from June 29 to July 7 among residents of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties. All are U.S. citizens, and 89 percent said they are registered to vote. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

It was financed primarily by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, a philanthropic organization, and also by the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, which opposes the new restrictions.

The poll confirms anecdotal evidence that the new restrictions have been embraced by hard-line exiles, who had urged Bush to take a stronger stance against Fidel Castro or risk losing Cuban-American support at the polls in November.

But many younger Cuban Americans have decried the restrictions as too harsh, and the Kerry campaign has sought to court those voters, calling the restrictions harmful to families.

Gov. Jeb Bush brushed off the results of the poll, calling its sponsors a ``biased, partisan group.''

Thirty-three percent of those polled said they would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who supports unrestricted travel, while 49 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for that candidate.

Those who arrived before the 1980 Mariel boatlift make up about two-thirds of all Cuban-American registered voters in Miami-Dade, according to a poll conducted by Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen in June.

YOUNGER GENERATION

But Gonzalez said that Cuban Americans who arrived after 1980 are increasingly becoming a voting power -- a potential problem for Bush as the majority of his support comes from those older than 50.

''A lot of these people are registering to vote in efforts to tell the president we're not in support of these measures,'' he said. ``He has lost support, but he can gain it back.''

Staff writer Lesley Clark contributed to this report.