Turnout possible trouble for Dems
Voter shift and support for Trump emerge as early warning signs
Black voters in Broward were overwhelmingly supportive of Joe Biden. His panic voters’ support for the Democratic nominee eroded. And white voters preferred Donald Trump.
The net result was a massive number of votes for Biden — 284,729 more in the deep Democratic blue county than Trump.
Although muchof 2020s voting may have been unique to the Trump era, an examination of countywide results and numbers from the 75 precincts containing the highest percentages of Black, Hispanic and white voters, some warning signs emerged for Democrats’ hopes of winning statewide races for governor and U.S. Senate in 2022 and beyond.
Enormous attention before and after Election Day focused on Miami-Dade County, where the Democrats cratered. Obscured by that attention is what happened in Broward, the state’s second-largest county and usually the biggest source of votes in statewide elections.
Though it wasn’t anything like the Miami-Dade plunge, the Democratic advantage in Broward was down this year. Biden’s advantage over Trump in Bro ward was 7,640 votes smaller than Hillary Clinton had over Trump in 2016.
Black voters
Good news for Democrats: Black voters went overwhelming ly for Bid en.
Bad news for Democrats: Turnout among Black voters was significantly lower than the countywide turnout, and lower than turnout for Hispanic and white voters.
In the 25 Bro ward precincts with the highest percentages of Black registered voters, Biden won 94.2% of the vote and Trump won 5%.
That represents a slight improvement for Trump from his 2016 race against Clinton. In the 20 Broward precincts with the highest percentages of black registered voters in 2016, Clinton received 96.4% of the vote to 2.5% for Trump.
In five Broward cities — Lauderdale Lakes, Lauder hill, North Lauderdale, Pembroke Park and West Park — in which at least half the population is Black, Bid en received 82% to 92% of the vote and Trump received from 8% to 17%.
Trump’s worst and best precincts — where he received 3.6% of the vote and 6.9%, respectively — in the Black community were both in Lauderhill.
In West Park, Trump did much better this year —17.4% of the vote—than the 8.8% he received in 2016.
A higher turnout of Black voters in Broward County wouldn’t have given Biden the state’s 29 electoral votes. But statewide victories can’t happen without higher turnout from Black voters, who are the backbone of the Democrats’ coalition.
State Sen. Perry Thurston said many Black voters liked seeing Biden holding a drive-in car rally in Mir a mar; vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, whose father is a Jamaican immigrant; and Biden stopping on Sistrunk Boulevard, the main street of northwest Fort Lauderdale (for an event hosted by Thurs ton ).
Thurston, who represents most of Fort Lauderdale’s Black neighborhoods and many other black communities in the county, said Black voters responded by voting overwhelming ly for Bid en.
But, he acknowledged, turnout was too low. In the precincts with the highest percentage of Black voters, 63.7% of those registered voted in the election. County wide turn out was 76%.
Thurston and other Black Democratic leaders knew before Election Day they had a potential problem and tried to overcome it. Thurston and former state Sen. Chris Smith sent teams of people to knock on the doors of Black registered voters who haven’ t turned out in the past. State Rep. Shevrin Jones, who won election to the state Senate on Tuesday, spearheaded an effort to reach Black men to encourage voting. Studies have shown Black women turn out to vote at far greater rates than Black men.
The Biden campaign even dispatched the rapper, actor and writer Common to appear with Jones at a Lauderhill barber shop just before the election— but the Bid en campaign’ s adhering to pandemic precautions meant it was a small event that ultimately relied on social media togetouttheword.
Thurston was disappointed in the results .“it worked partially .”
Rudy Jean-Bart, a professor of American history and African American history at Broward College, said some young Black progressives pushed Biden because they thought Trump was terrible, but others weren’ t fans of either and“were of the mind set if neither is going to serve me, I’m not going to choose between the lesser of two evils.”
And, he said, Harris may have done more to inspire Caribbean American women thanmen.
Jean-Bart said the level of turnout among Black voters is an issue for Democrats. “I thought itwould be higher,” he said .“If I were theI might be slightly alarmed by that in terms of futureelections,” hesaid.
Associated Press VoteCast poll of 3,698 Florida voters through ElectionDay found Black voters statewide favored Biden over Trump, 89% to9%.
Hispanic voters
The good news for Democrats: Hispanic voters favored Biden.
The bad news for Democrats:
Trump performed significantly better among Hispanic voters than he did in 2016 and Bid en performed significantly worse than Clinton.
Biden won 24 of the 25 precincts with the largest percentages of Hispanic voters in the county— 59.8% for Biden and 39.5% for Trump — but that was still bad for the Democratic candidate.
Biden had a 20.3 percentage point advantage over Trump in the 25 precincts. In 2016, Clinton enjoyed a 38.5 point advantage over Trump in the 20 precincts with the largest share of Hispanic voters.
There was a similar shift in Pembroke Pines and in Weston, both cities where more than 40% of the are Hispanic.
InWeston, Clinton had a 30.8 percentage point advantage over Trump in 2016. This year, Biden had a 17.4 point advantage over Trump. Weston is home to so many Venezuelans, whose home country has been mis managed by a succession of socialist dictators, Westonzuela.
In Pembroke Pines, Clinton had an 33.9 percentage point advantage over Trump in 2016. Biden had an 24.3 point advantage over Trump. In a Pembroke Pines precinct in which more than 60% of the registered voters are Hispanic and registration is about one-third Democratic, one-third Republican and one-third no party affiliation, Trump won 57.5% of the vote.
Jean-Bart, Richard De Na po li, Broward’s state Republican committeeman and former county party chairman, and Angelo Castillo, a longtime Pembroke Pines city commissioner, said the messaging labeling Biden and other Democratic candidates as socialist was powerfully effective with Hispanic voters.
“You went from Hispanic voters being very pro-Hillary and then turning the other way and being increasingly pro-Trump in 2020,” De Na pol is aid. Jean-Bart said many “were led to believe that Biden was a socialist, which creates PTSD with their experience from Castro .”
The same message worked well at turning out a large vote for Trump from Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade County, delivering a devastating blow to Bid en.
Democrats allowing the socialist label to stick “is the most colossally stupid thing any political party has done. Period. Ever,” Castillo said. “That word resonates to the very soul of Hispanics, not just Cuban Americans but also Venezuelans and others .”
Castillo said it isn’ t true, but it worked. Itwas “all the talk at the early voting sites .”
Turnout was high in the 25 precincts. At 76.5%, it was slightly higher than the county wide turn out.
Associated Press VoteCast poll of 3,698 Florida voters through Election Day found Hispanic voters statewide favored Biden over Trump, 54% to45%.
White voters
The good news for Democrats: White voters’ support for Trump was slightly less this year than in 2016, and notably lower in Broward than state wide.
The bad news for Democrats: White voters favored Trump.
Trump received 55.2% of the vote in the 25 precincts with the highest percentages of white voters in Broward; 44.2% of the vote went to Biden. That represented an advantage of 11 percentage points for Trump.
In 2016 against Clinton, Trump had a 15.9 point advantage in the 20 Broward precincts with the highest share of white voters.
Trump was especially strong in northeast Broward, along the coast north of Fort Lauderdale.
Turnout among white voters, at 81.5%, was 5.5 percentage points higher than overall turnout.
Support of Trump by white voters may show that “whites in Broward County aren’t as liberal as they may seem,” Jean-Bart said.
Associated Press VoteCast poll of 3,698 Florida voters through Election Day found white voters statewide favored Trump over Biden 61% to38%.
Biden won five of the 25 precincts.
Three were in Fort Lauderdale, in the area of Oakland Park Boulevard and State Road A1A, around Commercial Boulevard and Dixie Highway and the southwest part of the city near Davie Boulevard. Another was in Wilton Manors, and one was at the polling place at John Knox Village, a senior community in Pompano Beach.
The fine print
The Broward Supervisor of Elections Office has posted unofficial results from each of the county’s 577 precincts. The data aren’t a perfect reflection of what Black, Hispanic and white voters did, although people like DeNapoli, who pays lots of attention to political data, say it’s a use fulway to examine trends.
Voter registration records don’t provide a complete picture because race isn’t required. And Hispanic wasn’t an option on the forms before 1995. And in Broward, Hispanic voters live all over the county, which means that some precincts with the highest percentages of Hispanic voters in the county have fewer than 50% Hispanic registered voters.
Palm Beach County’ s said it would have “the precinct-level data available on our website along with the official results which will be available around November 17th.”
The AP Vote Cast survey was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. The results are preliminary and the numbers haven’t yet been refined so there could be statistical anomalies.