WASHINGTON – A strong across-the-board showing by Donald Trump helped propel the Republican former president to victory in Florida, once a preeminent swing state that has increasingly slipped out of Democrats’ grasp. Exhibit A: Trump was on track to win the longtime Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County when The Associated Press called the race at 8:01 p.m. ET.
Trump not only improved on his 2020 performance in Republican areas of the state. He made inroads with voters in Florida's battleground areas and was on pace to outperform Vice President Kamala Harris in areas considered to be moderately Democratic. Trump led Harris by 11 percentage points with about 80% of the expected vote report when the race was called.
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But his lead in Miami-Dade County was perhaps the most surprising — and the most dispiriting for Democrats. It's been decades since a Republican presidential contender carried the county, which Joe Biden won by by roughly 7 percentage points four years ago.
Over 81% of the vote had been counted in Florida when the AP called the race. Harris would have needed to get 73% of the outstanding vote left to be counted in order 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: Trump
POLL CLOSING TIME: 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET. Florida covers two time zones.
ABOUT THE RACE: The last time Florida swung for a Democratic presidential candidate was over a decade ago, when Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than a percentage point. Voters in the state haven’t looked back.
Once a pivotal battleground, Florida's political DNA has been altered by organizational stumbles by Democrats along with demographic shifts. That culminated in Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ nearly 20-point landslide win in 2022, when he clinched the longtime Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County.
It’s not just conservative seniors leaving the north to live out their golden years in the sunshine state who have rewired Florida’s 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 has struggled with candidate recruitment and money woes. Democrats also incorrectly assumed that younger generations of Cuban Americans would naturally gravitate toward the party — a prediction that hasn’t panned out. Combine all that with the fact that that advertising in the sprawling state, with has nearly a dozen different media markets, is just so dang expensive, Democrats have effectively been cast into into the political wilderness — er, Everglades.
Consider this: Young voters who will cast their first ballot this year weren’t alive when the state was the epicenter of political drama during the 2000 presidential election, when disputes over “hanging chads” and miscounted ballots made their way to the Supreme Court, which sealed George W. Bush’s 537-vote win over Democrat Al Gore.
The state is a considerable prize in presidential races, offering the winner 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 amount of outstanding vote.
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Learn more about how and why the AP declares winners in U.S. elections at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.