Opinion: Florida’s Hidden Midterms’ Message Should Worry Democrats

Signals from Florida’s Latino Vote that Aren’t Getting Enough Attention

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If you’ve been listening to national politicians and pundits, you’d think that the red wave in Florida was all about Miami-Dade County and its Latino vote turning more sharply Republican.

They’re overlooking the story of another county that’s far more telling and that’s more likely to have national implications. More on that later.

What Happened in Miami-Dade?

First, I’m not dismissing the significance of the Miami-Dade electoral results. In the 2022 midterms, the country’s most populous Latino-majority county voted Republican in all but one of 17 partisan races on the ballot.

Most strikingly, Governor Ron DeSantis became the first GOP gubernatorial candidate to win the state’s largest county since Jeb Bush in 2002. And he did so easily, by more than 10 percentage points.

Let’s put this into context: In 2018, DeSantis lost Miami-Dade by almost 21 percentage points. That’s a 31-point swing.

And that happened in a county that has been reliably Democratic in presidential elections, not breaking for a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

To say this should sound very loud alarms for Democrats would be an understatement. They are unlikely to ever turn Florida blue in a presidential election without taking Miami-Dade. While winning a presidential election without Florida is possible, as Joe Biden proved, a Democratic candidate almost has to run the board in other swing states.

A Miami-Dade poll worker stamps a voting ballot at a drive in drop box on Nov. 8, 2022, in Miami. (Saul Martinez/Getty Images)

The national narrative is that Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade are conservative and that they swung the election. That’s certainly part of it, even if it ignores the fact that for most of this past few decades Cuban Americans had become increasingly more liberal. Exit polls in 2012 showed that Mitt Romney eked out a tiny 50%-47% victory over Barack Obama, leading many commentators to argue that Cuban Americans could no longer be characterized as a “reliable Republican” constituency.

That pro-Democratic trend may have stopped with Obama, because Trump defeated Hillary Clinton among Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade by 13 points, and beat Joe Biden by a comparable margin.

That certainly changed in the 2022 midterms, where exit polls indicate that DeSantis won 68% of the Cuban American vote.

However, the Latino vote in the county is increasingly diverse, with growing numbers of Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, among others. Like Cubans, most of them fled dictatorships, socialism, and chaos in their home countries. They may be even more likely to vote for Republicans.

Finally, you can’t discount the impact of non-Latino voters who moved to Miami-Dade from other states since the COVID pandemic. Florida received a record net migration of 776,000 people over the past two years, many of them undoubtedly drawn to the Sunshine State because it reopened schools and businesses far before most of the rest of the U.S. Those new arrivals sent GOP registration numbers soaring.

What Florida County Was More Significant?

With Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and even Colombians in Miami-Dade disproportionately voting Republican, the county is simply not representative of the Latino vote nationally. Mexicans are by far the largest group, followed by Puerto Ricans. Both have traditionally sided with Democrats.

That’s why Osceola County, outside Orlando, tells a more interesting and important story. Osceola is the 12th-largest majority-Latino county in the country, thanks to its heavily Puerto Rican population.

An election official collects write-in ballots at the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections headquarters during the midterm elections in Kissimmee, Fla., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Gregg Newton/ Getty Images)

Traditionally, the county has been a Democratic stronghold. Even though Trump won Florida in 2020, Biden thumped him in Osceola County, receiving 97,297 votes (57%) to Trump’s 73,480 (43%). This fall, among Osceola’s active registered voters, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 98,285 to 59,204 (unaffiliated voters and those registered to minor parties accounted for another 95,701).

However, come election day, DeSantis received 54,322 votes (52.84%) to Democrat Charlie Christ’s 47,378 (46.08%). That’s a swing of about 20 percentage points from 2020.

It’s even more dramatic when compared to DeSantis’s performance in Osceola in 2018. Then, he only received 38.77% of the votes to the Democratic candidate’s 59.69%. That’s a swing of almost 28 percentage points.

Democrats won only four of the county’s 12 partisan races in the 2022 midterms. Congresswoman Val Demings wasn’t one of those winners. She lost her Senate race to incumbent Senator Marco Rubio, even though Demings was somewhat of a native daughter, having served as Orlando’s police chief.

Osceola’s Puerto Ricans not only defied their own history, they broke with their nationwide tradition of supporting Democrats, giving DeSantis 54% of their votes. That has implications that go well beyond the county and the state.

What Does This All Mean for the Latino Vote Nationally?

While Miami-Dade’s idiosyncratic demographics mean little when it comes to discerning national trends in the Latino vote, Osceola’s verdict packs a powerful punch for Democrats. It clearly shows that Republicans can make big inroads with a Latino group that has historically been disinclined to vote for the GOP.

Courtesy: Americas Society/Council of the Americas

Nationwide, exit polls indicate that Democrats won Latino voters by 60% to the GOP’s 39%. That’s a substantial improvement for Republicans from 2020, when Democrats received 66% to the GOP’s 32%.

Is this trend thanks to Republican outreach or, as Keith Humphreys argues, because Latinos are increasingly prosperous, which might make them more conservative? Even with a disproportionately large drop in life expectancy during the pandemic, Latinos live longer than Whites or Blacks, their income and wealth are growing faster than other ethnic groups, their once scandalous high school dropout rate has been more than halved, and Latino enrollment in four-year colleges is soaring.

Latinos’ gradual movement to the right is especially important because their share of eligible voters is increasing rapidly. The number of Latino voters has jumped by 4.7 million since 2018, which represents 62% of the total growth in U.S. eligible voters during this time.

The big question that remains is whether this long-term trend in favor of Republicans can shift Latino votes in swing states, especially Nevada and Arizona. There, Latinos are mostly of Mexican descent and tend to vote 2-1 for Democrats.

But Puerto Ricans, like Mexican Americans, used to do the same. Osceola County’s example indicates that Democrats would be fools to take winning the Latino vote for granted.

Cover photo: Left, Republican gubernatorial candidate for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during an election night watch party at the Convention Center in Tampa on Nov. 8, 2022. DeSantis easily defeated his opponent, Rep. Charlie Christ (Giorgio Viera/Getty Images). Right, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio speaks to his supporters during an election-night party on November 8, 2022 in Miami, Florida. Rubio beat his challenger, Rep. Val Demings, by 16 percentage points. (Saul Martinez/Getty Images)

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