Trump easily wins Florida Republican primary. But one in five vote for someone else
Florida Republicans mostly lined up behind Donald Trump in Tuesday’s primary election.
But in a race with only token opposition, nearly 20% of them voted for someone else.
With no real competition, the former president won more than eight out of every 10 votes in the Sunshine State, coasting to victory in an election that served mostly as a symbolic demonstration of Trump’s support in his home state.
Six other Republican presidential candidates, including Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis, were also on the ballot, but all had dropped out long before polls opened on Tuesday. And Trump, who voted for himself Tuesday in Palm Beach, secured the necessary delegates to clinch the GOP nomination last week.
But there are signs that the former president’s political strength isn’t what it once was.
In 2020 — when Trump was running as an incumbent president against three nominal candidates — he won about 94% of the vote in Miami-Dade County, a number that tracked with his statewide support, according to Florida elections records. This year, Trump received around 86% of the vote in Miami-Dade, and about 81% statewide.
Former U.S. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race on March 6, finished second in MiamiDade, with a little more than 10% of the vote.
With votes still being tallied Tuesday night, Haley had slim leads in three precincts — all of them majority-white.
Trump’s biggest margins in Miami-Dade were in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods in and around Hialeah and Miami.
Though Trump performed better in 2020, Justin Sayfie, a Republican lobbyist and adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the Republican turnout Tuesday night for Trump was significant