At a campaign rally, a Trump supporter holds a sign reading ‘Latinos for Trump’. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images).)
Florida’s transformation from a swing state to a red one became clear following the 2022 election, when Ron DeSantis won previously blue counties such as Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Duval, and Osceola on his way to a 19-point victory over Democrat Charlie Crist in the governor’s race.
It is not a surprise that Donald Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris in some of those blue counties in Florida’s presidential election on Tuesday night. This shows that the GOP is still in charge in this once-battleground state.
Trump took over six counties that Joe Biden won in 2020: Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Duval, Seminole, and Osceola. These counties voted for Biden by 14 percentage points that year and for Hillary Clinton by 25 points that year.
“That is a surprising trend,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “If you look at the voter registration numbers in Osceola, Democrats still have a 20,000-voter lead in that county, and Trump won.”
The website for the local supervisor of elections says that there are 20,257 more registered Democrats in Osceola than registered Republicans. In the county, 86,373 people have signed up to be independent.
People of color and Trump
In Osceola, it was clear that the Hispanic vote was moving toward Trump on a national level. A CNN exit poll found that Trump got 45% of the votes from Hispanic voters.
The U.S. Census says that 56% of the people living in Osceola County are Hispanic, with Puerto Ricans making up the largest group.
“There are a number of reasons why Osceola voted for Trump,” Jewett said. “One, Hispanics across the country and especially in Florida have moved toward Trump in the last eight years.
This means that he is getting a higher percentage of Hispanics, especially Hispanic men without college degrees.”
Jewett said it is interesting to see the Puerto Rican community move to the right, even though Cuban Americans in Florida have been leaning Republican for years.
“Puerto Ricans have always been more Democratic,” he said. “It looks like Trump has also been able to connect with that group.”
Barry Edwards, a political strategist in the Tampa Bay area, thinks that one reason the Republicans are winning more seats in Florida is that “massive erosion amongst Hispanics towards the Republicans, because they reject what they perceive as ‘woke’ liberal policies.”
“They are too far to the left for a normal Ponce Catholic family,” he said.
One other Florida county that looked like it would vote for Biden in 2020 but now does for Trump is Miami-Dade, which voted for Trump by 11 points, 55% to 44%, on Tuesday. In 2020, Biden won by 7 percentage points, with 53% to 46%.
The blue counties
Not only did Trump do slightly better in all 67 Florida counties, but some of the bluest counties, like Leon County, still voted strongly for Harris.
In that case, voters chose the Democratic candidate by a huge 22 points, 60% to 38%. That is less than the percentage they gave Biden in 2020, when it was 64% to 36%.
With a 21-point lead, Harris won Gadsden County by a vote of 65% to 34%. Not as well as Biden did in 2020, though, when he won by 26 points, 68% to 32%.
Trump did not win Palm Beach County, which is where he lives, but it was close: Harris got 49.76% of the vote, while Trump got 49.02%, which is a difference of only 5,511 votes out of 747,676 cast.
On the other hand, Biden beat Trump by 13 percentage points in Palm Beach in 2020, 56% to 43%.
Pinellas County is the best example of how much politics in Florida have changed in the last four years. As this New York Times story shows, Pinellas was praised across the country as the perfect “swing county” in 2020.
If it lived up to its reputation, it picked the winner that year, with Biden beating Trump by 0.22 percentage points.
What about this year? Trump won by more than 5 percentage points, which is a lot.
Trump increased the number of votes he got by 5 percentage points in Lee, Polk, and Brevard counties, which are usually red.
He added that the Florida GOP continues to be strong because, over the past four years, voter registration in all 67 counties has gained “massive net numbers of Republicans vs. Democrats.”
This is because Republicans continue to have higher turnout in elections and there are still some so-called “Dixiecrats” who consistently vote Republican.