President Trump is projected to win Florida's 29 electoral votes thanks in part to Cuban American voters in the traditionally Democratic stronghold Miami-Dade County, which has a heavily Hispanic population.
While Trump did not win Miami-Dade County, he came much closer to Democratic nominee Joe Biden's numbers (53%-46%) than he did when running against Hillary Clinton in 2016 (63%-34%). That translated to a 3.4% win in the state in 2020 compared to his narrow 1.2% margin in 2016.
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Miami-Dade County is Florida's most populous county with approximately 2.7 million residents. Trump cut his 2016 vote deficit in the county by roughly 200,000 votes this year.
Rafael Fagundo rings a bell as he and other supporters of President Donald Trump chant and wave flags outside the Versailles Cuban restaurant during a celebration on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Cuban-American voters favored the president’s reelection, even though 59% of Hispanic voters in general supported Biden, according to polling from the Fox News Voter Analysis, compared to Trump’s 40%.
Pundits are already pontificating about what Trump did right and Biden did wrong in the Latino community that led Florida to stay red.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., vented her frustrations over Latino voters' turnout for Democrats on Tuesday.
“I won’t comment much on tonight’s results as they are evolving and ongoing, but I will say we’ve been sounding the alarm about Dem vulnerabilities [with] Latinos for a long, long time,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. "There is a strategy and a path, but the necessary effort simply hasn’t been put in.”
Biden underperformed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in several counties in Texas and Florida with Latino voters on Election Day, helping solidify Trump's wins in those states. Some attribute that underperformance to Trump's campaign hammering Biden as representing socialist policies.
"The main thing we look at is why we came here to America, why a lot of people immigrated here. We view Biden and Harris as socialists. … That's one of the main reasons why people didn’t vote for Biden and Harris," Glenn Parada, the Republican National Hispanic Assembly's Florida political director, told Fox News.
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"One of the things that pushed people off [the Democratic platform] is the way they pandered to us, playing 'Despacito.' There was no real platform, no legislation," Parada said.
Both Trump and Biden upped their ground games in Florida as Election Day approached. Trump packed in a rally outside Miami on Sunday night and spoke until 1 a.m. despite the area's midnight curfew.
Fox News' Phil Keating, Shannon Bream, Michael Ruiz, Brie Stimson and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
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