South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
State facing new political landscape
Trump turned Florida deeper red; what’s next?
As Florida Democrats plot their political comeback, they are facing a tough reality: The Sunshine State is Trump country.
Florida Republicans swayed Latino voters, boosted support in the state’s rural heartland and cut into the Democratic advantage in big cities.
President Donald Trump painted the Florida map a deeper red and tripled his margin of victory from four years ago, carrying the state by more than 370,000 votes. Despite Trump’s loss nationally, Florida Republicans are ecstatic.
“I have never been more excited and bullish about where our party is headed,” said Christian Ziegler, vice chair of the Republican Party of Florida.
The GOP’s success wasn’t
limited to Miami-Dade County, where Trump saw a surge of support from Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American voters.
Trump improved his margin of victory in 33 of the 55 counties that he won in Florida. He also picked up support in Democratic areas, including Broward, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Orange and Osceola counties.
Eric Johnson, a Democratic political strategist based in South Florida, said the political map shows Democrats face an uphill climb if they want to win back the governor’s mansion in 2022 for the first time in more than two decades.
With the exception of former President Barack Obama’s victories in Florida in 2008 and 2012, the state’s Democrats have had little to celebrate.
“For a swing state to be a swing state, it has to swing your way more often,” Johnson said. “We have got to stop pointing to Obama as the rule and figure out how he was the exception.”
Urban and Latino gains for Trump
Democrats still won urban counties in Florida, but Biden carried them by smaller margins than Hillary Clinton did four years ago. That could spell trouble for future Democratic contenders, who need to run up the score in Florida’s major cities to counter Republican support elsewhere in the state.
Miami-Dade County pumped up Trump’s margin of victory from four years ago more than anywhere else in Florida.
But Trump also did significantly better in Central Florida’s Osceola County, which is home to a large number of Puerto Rican voters.
The vote count there suggests Republicans made inroads in the Puerto Rican community. Trump’s tossing of paper towels to storm-ravaged Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria in 2017 became a symbolic image for critics of his indifference to the island’s problems. Pundits speculated a Puerto Rican backlash could sink Trump’s chances in Florida. It didn’t happen.
“The Biden campaign was not as effective at reaching out to the Puerto Rican vote,” said Luis Martínez-Fernández, an expert on Latino politics at the University of Central Florida. “We need to understand the Puerto Rican vote is very diverse. There are some populations among Puerto Ricans who tend to be conservative, evangelical voters.”
Four years ago, 62% of Latino voters favored Clinton over Trump, according to exit polling. Biden won that group by 52%, a 10-percentage-point swing toward Trump. Exit polling indicates Biden carried the majority of Puerto Rican voters, but not as many as Clinton did four years ago.
Trump’s campaign hit Biden hard with a false socialism label, an attack that resonated with families that had fled dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela.
But other factors came into play with the Latino vote, Martínez-Fernández said.
Florida’s Latino community is not monolithic, and voting behavior is influenced by national origin, income, age, religious faith and many other factors. Latinos attend evangelical churches, which Trump courted extensively. And concerns about higher taxes and another COVID-19 lockdown could have swayed Latino business owners to Trump, Martínez-Fernández said.
Osceola County is heavily reliant on tourism, a sector of the economy hit hard by the COVID-19 shutdown.
The Trump campaign aggressively courted Florida’s Latino vote through old-school in-person politics, bringing in a Cuban-American UFC fighter and other prominent figures to help drum up support at events.
Another possible reason why Trump did better with Latino voters — the fading memory of Trump’s attacks against U.S. Sen. Marco
Rubio during the primary four years ago. Trump mocked Rubio, a Miami native, in the 2016 GOP primary, dismissing him as “Little Marco.”
That angered Rubio’s supporters in Florida. Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, a Miami-Dade Cuban-American who supported Rubio for president, called Trump “the biggest con-man there is” during the heated GOP primary four years ago.
But Trump succeeded in getting Rubio’s supporters back on board and on the campaign trail for him in 2020. Nunez co-chaired Latinos for Trump, and Rubio spoke at a Trump rally in Opa-locka that drew thousands.
Latinos will continue to play an increasingly important role as they become a larger share of registered voters. Latinos now make up 17% of registered voters in Florida.
Democratic bright spots
Republicans won up and down the ballot in Florida, but northeast Florida, suburban counties in the I-4 corridor and the minimum wage could offer some hope for Democrats.
Biden flipped Jacksonville and Duval County blue. He also performed better in Jacksonville’s Republican-leaning suburban counties.
The demographics are shifting in that part of the state in a way that favors Democrats, with younger and college-educated people moving in from other states, said Michael Binder, a political scientist at the University of North Florida.
“These counties are growing,” he said. “The folks who are coming in tend to be more middle class and mobile. Those voters went to Biden more than to Trump.”
Biden flipped Seminole County, home to many of Orlando’s suburbs. Pinellas County, which Obama won in 2008 and 2012 and Trump carried in 2016, flipped back to the Democrats.
A constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2026 passed with nearly 61% of the vote, suggesting Floridians may be open to more liberal ideas.
Counties in Florida
If you are a Trump fan and want to be around like-minded people, move to Holmes County, a rural community that borders Georgia. More than 89% of the county’s voters supported Trump.
The state’s most Democratic county remains Gadsden County near Tallahassee, where 68% of voters supported Biden. Gadsden County is Florida’s only Black majority county, and Black voters have been a reliable source of Democratic support.
Broward County is Florida’s second most Democratic County.
Biden won nearly 65% of the vote there.
Florida’s rural heartland
Republicans are dominating in rural America, and Florida is no exception.
Trump posted some of his biggest gains in margin of victory in two counties that border Lake Okeechobee — Hendry and
Glades counties.
Democrats used to win Florida’s rural counties. Bill Clinton won both Hendry and Glades in 1996. The GOP candidate has won the majority of the vote in every election since then.
The Villages and older voters
The Villages, a massive Central Florida retirement community famous for its golf cart parades, is an important stop for candidates.
Before the election, pundits wondered whether a senior shift of older voters upset about the handling of the pandemic would help deliver the state to Biden.
Biden did better than Clinton in Sumter and Lake counties, where The Villages is located. He also picked up votes in other retiree-rich parts of the state, including southwest Florida and the Treasure Coast.
But the gains weren’t enough to surpass Trump’s wins elsewhere in the state. About 52% of voters 65 and older supported Trump, compared with 57% four years ago, according to exit polling.
What’s next for Democrats?
Democrats don’t have a unified comeback plan. Liberals and moderates are fighting over which direction the party should head.
They also are powerless with Republicans controlling the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the Florida Legislature. That hurts their ability to raise money and engage voters.
Not only did Trump easily win Florida, but Democrats lost seats in the U.S. Congress and the state Legislature. Former Gov. Rick Scott unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson two years ago.
As a result of continued down-ballot losses, the Democrats lack a roster of well-known leaders.
While former gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams helped to turn Georgia blue, a scandal sidelined Florida’s up-and-coming Democratic star Andrew Gillum. Police found the 2018 Florida candidate for governor in an “inebriated state” at a Miami Beach hotel with two men and a bag of crystal meth. Gillum said he had too much to drink but did not do drugs.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat.
State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Broward County Democrat, said the 2020 election shows that what the Democrats have been doing isn’t working in Florida.
“There has to be a cometo-Jesus meeting,” he said. “I am not going to stay on a sinking ship in this manner without doing something to rescue us.”
Skyler Swisher can be reached at sswisher@ sunsentinel.com, 561-2436634 or @SkylerSwisher