Former President Donald J. Trump won Miami-Dade County, Fla., on Tuesday, unofficial election results show, solidifying the remarkable blue-to-red swing of the state’s most populous county.
Miami-Dade used to be where Democrats ran up their numbers, turning out liberal voters, many of whom had moved there from New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast. Hillary Clinton won the county by 30 percentage points in 2016.
But as Florida has transformed from a battleground state into one that votes more reliably Republican, Miami-Dade, too, has changed. Hispanics, who had appeared to be leaning Democratic in the 2008 and 2012 elections, started shifting right. In 2020, President Biden won the county by seven points.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Mr. Trump also won Florida, according to The Associated Press. He was on track to win both Miami-Dade County and Florida by double digits.
Republicans had already flipped Miami-Dade in 2022, when Gov. Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist, a former governor and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, by more than 11 points. But Mr. Crist was a former Republican who stirred little excitement among Democrats in a low turnout midterm election.
This year’s presidential election appeared less favorable for Republicans in the county. But Ms. Harris’s campaign and national Democrats spent very little money in Florida, seeing the expensive state as a lost cause. That left down-ballot Democrats to rely on the limited resources of the Florida Democratic Party, and on their own modest advertising and voter turnout efforts.
Even before Election Day, Republicans could see Miami-Dade trending in their favor. Last week, Senator Marco Rubio joined local Republican officials at an early voting site in West Miami, where he lives, and said in Spanish that Mr. Trump’s chances in the county looked good. Hispanics account for about 68 percent of the county’s population.
“In Miami-Dade, Democrats used to win by 20, 25 points,” Mr. Rubio said.
But the Democratic Party has “lost touch with common sense,” he added, “and that is why we have seen so many people join the Republican Party.”
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