An alliance of over 20 independent digital media outlets, content creators, and actors from Cuban civil society has launched a poll measuring public opinion with unprecedented reach regarding the political and social reality of Cuba, open to Cubans living both inside and outside the country. The initiative, coordinated by a consortium of independent journalists and social scientists, aims to provide data to contrast the hypotheses on how citizens think about the most urgent and controversial issues facing Cuba.
The partial results available as of today, based on a sample of 4,324 responses collected in the first 48 hours, already provide the most detailed map to date of how Cubans perceive the figures of the Government. The figures are devastating for the regime, but they also reveal an internal hierarchy of rejection and, above all, four unexpected names that still command some residual respect even among the most critical audience.
94% do not trust anyone in the Government
The general question about trust in the Government yields an average of 1.09 out of 5. 94% of respondents register the absolute minimum: no trust at all. Only 33 people in a sample of over 4,300 express complete trust. This is the question with the least variance in the entire survey and spans all demographic segments: men and women, young and old, both inside and outside of Cuba. Not even state workers—the group structurally closest to the regime—break the pattern: their average is 1.19, also far below passing.
The diaspora rejects it with greater intensity than the island, although the difference is narrow because within Cuba the rejection is practically total. Abroad, 97.7% is the minimum; on the island, it stands at 92.2%.
Díaz-Canel, in the basement of rejection
When individuals were asked to evaluate eight figures from the Government on a scale from 1 to 5, Miguel Díaz-Canel received the lowest score: 1.11 on average. A total of 93.7% rated him with the minimum score. Combining ratings of 1 and 2, the disapproval reaches 97.1%. Support—ratings of 4 and 5—is statistically negligible: just 1.2%.
It is also the figure with the lowest percentage of "no response" (only 0.6%): nearly the entire audience has a formed opinion about the leader, and almost all of them are negative. The survey thus portrays a leader with no room for interpretive doubt, broadly identified with the country's decline.
Behind Díaz-Canel stands the historical core of the regime, in a compact cluster of figures who receive nearly identical ratings: Esteban Lazo Hernández (1.13), Manuel Marrero Cruz (1.13), Roberto Morales Ojeda (1.14), and Raúl Castro (1.21). These are the individuals who have held positions of power for decades, and the survey shows them as the main faces of rejection. For all four, the percentage assigning them a rating of 1 or 2 always exceeds 94%.
Bruno Rodríguez, the "lesser evil"
At the other end of the official block stands Bruno Rodríguez, the Cuban Foreign Minister. With an average of 1.62 out of 5, he remains well below the passing mark, yet he is the government figure with the best relative performance and the only one to register a double-digit support percentage: 11.1% give him ratings of 4 or 5. In comparative terms, he has ten times more support than Díaz-Canel.
The most likely explanation is his profile as chancellor. Rodríguez maintains international visibility—speaking at the UN, meeting with foreign counterparts—without being directly associated with the internal economic decline. He is also the figure with the highest rate of "no response" in the survey (24.2%), which suggests that his diplomatic work is off the radar for a significant portion of the public.
In the open-ended question of the survey, however, Bruno Rodríguez was mentioned 16 times in an explicitly critical manner, several of them associated with Gerardo Hernández and "the five spies," which nuances that apparent 11% support.
With equally technical profiles, Joel Chapman (1.55) and Pérez Oliva (1.31) hold intermediate positions. They share with Bruno Rodríguez a distinguishing characteristic: they are linked more to management portfolios—energy, economic affairs—than to the political-ideological body of the regime. This distinction seems to provide them with a minimal cushion of residual respect that the more symbolic figures of historical Castroism fail to maintain.
"There is no one": the response that dominated the open question
The questionnaire included an optional question asking respondents to mention other government figures with favorable performance. A total of 1,384 people responded. Among them, 63.4% only wrote "none," "no one is good," or "they're all corrupt". Some responses were particularly striking: "Anyone linked to the upper echelons of this government doesn't inspire any confidence in the future"; "None have a favorable performance, they are all puppets"; "Being part of this misgovernment means accepting ineptitude, corruption, lies, and manipulation".
Other responses turned the question into a conscious act of protest. Three respondents wrote the name of Marco Rubio, two the name of Amelia Calzadilla, and one the name of Mario Pentón. One of those responses explained the gesture unequivocally: "I know they are not in the Cuban government, but they are figures of Cubans who would indeed do good for the people."
Four names that do make the cut
The true finding of the open questionnaire, however, lies in the remaining 8.4%: the responses that did mention a figure from the regime and did so in a genuinely favorable way. A qualitative reading of the text, contrast by contrast, allows us to identify four recurring names with explicit support in the comments.
Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, Minister of Transportation, tops the list with 43 mentions. The responses are unusually specific: "the only one who stands out", "he bought a ship for oil transportation", "more adept on social media than his colleagues". One respondent summarizes it this way: "It's a government without success, where its political figures do not represent the people, the only one worth considering is Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila". Another adds: "The Minister of Transportation is more skilled in his social media, but I still distrust everyone".
Lázaro Expósito Canto, former secretary of the Communist Party in Granma and later in Santiago de Cuba, receives 34 mentions. His name is repeatedly associated with his completed territorial management: "the best that existed in Cuba amidst all the bad"; "he had a more dignified role"; "the success of his work in both provinces was highly praised by the people". A respondent from Santiago de Cuba states it particularly clearly: "There was a secretary named Lázaro Expósito who was the best that existed, at least in my home province."
Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, Vice President of the Council of Ministers and former First Secretary of the Party in Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey, has received 18 mentions. The pattern is consistent: respect for his past territorial management. "The city improved significantly, and the people supported him"; "he had a rough character but elevated both provinces in cleanliness and morale"; "I recognize that there were visible changes that were well regarded".
Inés María Chapman, also the vice president of the Council of Ministers, is mentioned 7 times with nuanced positive evaluations: "she is doing a somewhat acceptable job compared to the other leaders"; "only Chapman helps the people, which does not suit them".
The four share a clear pattern. They are not ideological proponents of the regime nor faces of the political-repressive apparatus. They are individuals with a concrete track record in territorial management, associated—whether justly or not—with notable local achievements. The absolute intensity of the mentions is modest—together they accumulate 102 favorable mentions in a survey where 98% reject the Government as a whole—but significant in contrast: no one would expect to find praises for the regime at all in this surveyed universe.
The reverse: those identified by name and surname
Some respondents took the opportunity to point out those they consider symbolic of the rejection. The most frequently mentioned names in a critical sense, in addition to Bruno Rodríguez himself, are Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro "El Cangrejo" and his cousin Sandro Castro (8 mentions each), Ramiro Valdés Menéndez (6 mentions, several accompanied by the word "murderer"), state television journalist Humberto López (5), Marino Murillo (5), and Gerardo Hernández Nordelo (5). Mentioned less frequently are Mariela and Alejandro Castro Espín, the children of Raúl. This is the list of faces that the public explicitly associates with the perpetuation of family power and with the regime's repressive and propaganda apparatus.
A hierarchy that matters
The government's bloc reflects, in summary, a level of consensus on rejection that is unusually significant in any survey exercise. However, beneath this overwhelming consensus lies an internal hierarchy that complicates a simplified reading: not all figures are seen as equal. There is a symbolic core (Díaz-Canel, Lazo, Marrero, Morales Ojeda, Raúl Castro) that concentrates total rejection. There is a second group of technical figures (Bruno Rodríguez, Joel Chapman, Pérez Oliva) who maintain a minimal margin of tolerance. And there is a third group—the most interesting, as they were not included in the original survey list—of local managers (Rodríguez Dávila, Expósito Canto, Tapia Fonseca, Chapman) who still receive concrete praise.
The survey does not allow us to state that these evaluations reflect actual technical merits. They may correspond to recent media salience, local memory of isolated achievements, or simply the absence of a direct association with national deterioration. However, it does allow us to assert something more politically useful: even in a Cuban landscape that rejects the Government with unprecedented intensity, there is room to distinguish between individuals. And the names that appear in that space—four territorial or sectorial managers with a technical profile rather than an ideological one—can provide insight into what type of public servant Cubans would find acceptable in any future scenario.
Limitations
The survey was conducted via an open website, which implies a self-selected sample of the public with internet access and political engagement. The male demographic predominates (64%), along with a university-educated group (70% having university or postgraduate education), and Havana accounts for 50% of the sample from the island. Therefore, the results describe a real, sizable, and organized segment of the connected Cuban population, but not the entire Cuban population.
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