PIP: By the mid 1980s, considerably more than 750,000 Hispanics resided in the Miami metropolitan area; they comprised more than 60% of the population of Miami and over 40% of the Metro-Dade County. The Miami area population is highly segregated residentially by race and ethnicity. 3 important components of Miami's social and political structure underlie the pattern of recent ethnic politics in the Miami metropolitan area: 1) the tri-ethnic nature of the population, and the heightened sense of this ethnicity, encourages ethnic bloc voting; 2) the high degree of residential segregation not only lends strength to ethnic or racial voting blocs, but intensifies certain kinds of emotional territorial issues such as zoning or public housing location; and 3) the existing 2-tier governmental structure provides the boundaries within which the political game is played. 1 of the more interesting patterns of political change in Cuban Miami is the at 1st gradual and later more dramatic shift from exile politics to ethnic politics. The rising power of the Latin vote became apparent in the early 1970s when Maurice Ferre, of Puerto Rican background, was elected to the Miami city commission in the mid-1960s. Active participation in the political system has provided 1 means for achieving group goals, while the participation itself has stimulated the sense of ethnic identification and politicla power. It seems certain that ethnicity will dominate the political landscape in the Miami metropolitan area for some time to come.