After months of campaigning in Florida, Caribbean-American voters in South Florida showed up in record-breaking numbers to support Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But their votes still weren’t enough to earn Biden a win in the key swing state.
Both campaigns had made Florida a priority in the waning weeks of the election.
Trump made frequent visits across the state. After being infected by the coronavirus, the president reemerged on the campaign trail in Florida, holding rallies that attracted unmasked throngs crowding shoulder-to-shoulder and willing to risk infection.
Biden’s campaigns looked significantly different; with invitation-only drive-in rallies, fewer guests being allowed and residents urged to wear masks.
Both camps vied for support among seniors, Blacks and Hispanics in a state, but in the end, it was the President that prevailed.
The three South Florida countries, which were considered a must-win for either candidate chances of winning Florida, all remained Blue. In Broward County, heavily populated with Jamaican-Americans, Biden had 64.5% (617,000) of the vote to Trump’s 34.8% (333,000). In Palm Beach County, Biden led Trump, 55.9% (429,000) to 43.3% (332,000).
But it was in Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, that Biden underperformed, which contributed heavily to his loss statewide.
To be clear, Trump did not win Miami-Dade, however, Biden performed worse that Hilary Clinton did in the county in 2016 when she captured 63% of the votes in Miami-Dade. With more people voting this year, Biden captured 53.3% (617,000) of the votes compared to Trump’s 46% (532,000). Biden led by a margin of over 84,000 votes, versus Clinton’s 290,000 vote-advantage in 2016.
After winning the majority of the counties in North and Central Florida, Trump won the state with 51.2% of the vote to Biden’s 47.8%, a margin of some 375,000 votes.
“It’s official: Florida is still Trump country,” said his Florida campaign spokesperson, Emma Vaughn. “Florida has once again delivered its 29 electoral votes for President Trump and is ready for Four More Years.”
Many politician commentators attribute Biden’s loss in Florida and the already narrow voting margins nationwide to the lukewarm enthusiasm that Latinos in Florida offered the democratic nominee.
Trump tried to tie Biden to the Democratic far left, hoping that branding him as a socialist — even though Biden lies to the center of his party politically — would gain traction among voters of Cuban, Venezuelan and Central American descent whose families fled the politics of their homelands.
“We kind of saw it coming,” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who was among those who had been sounding the alarms months ago of possible trouble for the Biden campaign in Florida.
“It may very well be that his underperformance in Miami-Dade trips up his hopes of capturing Florida,” she told Associated Press. Amandi, who is of Cuban descent, had urged the Biden campaign to more aggressively court Hispanics, who represent almost one in every five voters in Florida.
Floridians turned out in huge numbers at the polls Tuesday to weigh in on the presidential race, as well as to decide who to send to Congress and the statehouse. The number of early voters, including a record-breaking 9 million ballots cast before Election Day, signaled high turnout among the state’s 14.4 million registered voters. Statewide, turnout exceeded 76%, a couple percentage points higher than four years ago.
But the heavier turnout did not necessarily translate to Democratic votes, however. Two Miami-area Republicans defeated a pair of Democratic incumbents for seats in the U.S. House. Florida now has 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats in the U.S. House — and that majority will increase by two.
Voters also narrowly approved a ballot measure that will gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, one of six ballot measures that were before them.
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By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN AP Writer contributed to this report.
