WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s strong overall performance helped propel the former Republican president to victory in Florida, once a preeminent swing state that is increasingly slipping out of Democratic grip. Exhibit A: Trump was on track to win the longtime Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County when the Associated Press called the race at 7:01 p.m. CT.
Trump didn’t just improve his 2020 performance in Republican areas of the state. He made inroads with voters in battleground areas of Florida and was on pace to outperform Vice President Kamala Harris in areas considered moderately Democratic. Trump led Harris by 11 percentage points with about 80% of the votes expected when the race was called.
But his lead in Miami-Dade County was perhaps the most surprising — and the most discouraging for Democrats. It’s been decades since a Republican presidential candidate won the county, which Joe Biden carried by about 7 percentage points four years ago.
More than 81% of votes had been counted in Florida when the AP called the race. Harris would have had to get 73% of the remaining votes to be counted to overtake Trump’s lead.
CANDIDATES: President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Claudia De la Cruz (Socialism and Liberation) vs. Chase Oliver (Libertarian) vs. Peter Sonski (American Solidarity) vs. Jill Stein (Green) vs. Randall Terry (Constitution).
WINNER: Asset
SURVEY CLOSING TIME: 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. CT. Florida spans two time zones.
ABOUT THE RACE: The last time Florida went to a Democratic presidential candidate was more than a decade ago, when Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than a percentage point. The state’s voters haven’t looked back.
Once a crucial battleground, Florida’s political DNA has been altered by Democrats’ organizational failures as well as demographic shifts. That culminated in Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s nearly 20-point landslide victory in 2022, when he won the longtime Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County.
It’s not just conservative seniors who left the North to live out their golden years in the Sunshine State who have reshaped Florida politics. Immigrants fleeing a despotic Venezuelan government have been welcomed by the Republican Party, just as Cuban exiles — reliable GOP voters — were more than a generation ago.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party faces problems recruiting candidates and money. Democrats also wrongly assumed that younger generations of Cuban Americans would be naturally drawn to the party — a prediction that did not come true. Combine all that with the fact that advertising in this sprawling state, which has nearly a dozen different media markets, is so expensive that Democrats have effectively been thrown into the political wilderness — er, the Everglades.
Consider this: Young voters who will vote for the first time this year were not alive when the state was the epicenter of political drama during the 2000 presidential election, when disputes over “hanging chads” and miscounted ballots reached the Supreme Court. which sealed George W. Bush’s victory by 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore.
The state represents a considerable prize in presidential elections, providing the winner with 30 electoral votes.
WHY AP CALLED THE RACE: The AP determined that Harris had no mathematical path to victory given Trump’s massive lead and the number of outstanding votes.
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