Democrats’ Florida drubbing is a cautionary tale

As much as Democrats might want to exult over midterm-election results, they can’t ignore the drubbing they took in Florida, a longtime battleground that has now turned solid red. Without a prompt assessment of what went wrong, the party risks losing the country’s third most populous state for the foreseeable future.

Not only did Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio handily win reelection, both trounced their opponents in Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, with 2.7 million people, more than two-thirds of whom are Hispanic. They underlined an awkward trend: Democrats’ brand with Latino voters is collapsing in Florida — and shows signs of doing so nationwide.

In narrowly losing Florida to Donald Trump in 2016, Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by nearly 30%. Four years later, Joe Biden won by 7. How did DeSantis and Rubio rack up double-digit wins in the county?

For one thing, Republicans undertook voter-registration drives focused on naturalized citizens from countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — groups particularly receptive to the charge that Democratic policies amount to “socialism.” Equis Research found many Latinos defected to Trump in 2020 due to his “focus on reopening the economy” during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In a similar way, Mr. DeSantis’s drive to keep schools and businesses open — despite criticism in the national media — became a key part of his Spanish-language advertising. Some 64% of the state’s Hispanics approved of his handling of the pandemic.

Even DeSantis’s most notorious stunt — sending a plane full of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — drew solid Latino support. That should remind Democrats that Hispanics aren’t a monolith and immigration isn’t their defining issue. In fact, one recent survey found immigration ranked ninth among Latinos’ concerns, trailing the economy, education and violent crime.

Democrats might be tempted to ascribe their setback to Florida’s unique demographics. But there’s growing evidence that the problem extends beyond the Sunshine State. Although the party successfully flipped one majority-Latino South Texas district, Republicans captured a neighboring one that had been Democratic for more than a century. There appears to be a national rightward shift for Latinos of about 10% between 2018 and 2022.

Democrats need to stop taking Latinos for granted and start focusing on what they actually care about. A good example is the au courant term “Latinx,” which is ubiquitous among party professionals. Only 3% of Hispanics adopt it for themselves. Indeed, the term bothers or offends 40%. Such pandering too often takes the place of actual policies. Democrats must learn to speak to Latinos’ real concerns — inflation, schools, crime, housing — and the solutions the party offers.

Florida didn’t go from purple to stark red solely because Democrats went astray with Latinos. Republicans benefited from an influx of GOP voters from other states, a huge registration drive and a significant spending advantage. But such efforts only highlight the relative complacency of the Democrats. Unless they’re prepared to write off one of the biggest prizes on the Electoral College map, they’d better get to work.