2020 U.S. Election: Why Donald Trump Won Florida

Laura Vianello prepares for the wind on the sidewalk in front of the Versailles restaurant. He wears dark glasses and a gold cross around his neck and flies a huge flag with the image of Donald Trump.

“Trump will make America great again,” says Vianello, 74, honking at passing cars. “We were doing very well before China released the coronavirus and we will be fine soon.”

The Versalles in Little Havana, the Cuban neighborhood of Miami, has existed for almost 50 years. the Meeting place for exiles when they want to celebrate, cry or talk about politics in a little cafe. On Calle Ocho, as Calle Eighth is called here, they cheered the death of Fidel Castro and the basketball victories of the Miami Heat.

And here now they are also cheering on Donald Trump. Dozens of people turned out on election night, shouting and singing, playing deafening salsa. Because they wait, and they finally know when it is long after midnight that Trump has won again in Florida. Mostly thanks to your help.

Florida, tip in the balance, mother of all so-called changing states: Trump and Joe Biden had last been face to face here in the polls. The close race in the southern state had given Democrats hope that this election night would end quickly.

But then the result was surprisingly clear.

Trump got those 29 votes in the electoral body relatively early in the night and with a clear advantage, without which he cannot remain president. Because of this, too, it could be a long time before a result is known nationally. It all depends again on the North and the Midwest, where the number will be counted well into the next few days.

Florida Democrats had been very optimistic. Why were they so wrong, what went wrong in the Sunshine State? One of the reasons for this can be found in Little Havana.

Political minds always boil here, perhaps a matter of temperament. The oldest generation of Cuban exiles, those who were born on the Caribbean island, traditionally tend toward the Republicans, filled with anger and sadness at the unforgettable trauma of communism from which they once escaped.

Like Laura Vianello. Came to the United States in 1960, he was 14 at the time. A year later, his uncle was shot down in his fighter plane during the unsuccessful US invasion of the Bay of Pigs. “Captain Raúl Vianello” is what she still calls him, and begins to cry when he tells her of his fate. “His parachute didn’t open,” she says.

Vianello blames the then President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, for the death of his uncle, and takes the Democrats, to whom Kennedy belonged, into the custody of the party to this day. “I’ve had to listen to Raúl’s story of suffering all my life! And it’s your fault!”

Younger Cuban Americans born in the United States, on the other hand, have a more relaxed relationship with the Castro regime, which they often only know from family stories. Many of them are more liberal than their parents.

Unfortunately, Democrats lost this demographic advantage by neglecting the Cuban exile as an electorate for too long. They took for granted the voices of Cubans in exile, who have now taken their revenge.

“You only call every four years if you need me,” said Cedric McMinn, vice president of Biden’s Florida election team, citing a disgruntled Latino voter. “Where are you the rest of the time?” Apparently not there. A fatal strategic mistake, which even former President Barack Obama couldn’t fix when he returned to Miami on Saturday.

Based on initial analyzes, Biden was able to increase the number of seniors and whites, two other major groups of voters in Florida. But not enough to make up for Trump’s hard-earned advantage with Latinos and African Americans. This was reflected in a significant loss of votes in the Miami-Dade metropolitan district, where the president snatched important percentage points from his rival and therefore Biden was left behind. It did not reach the Hillary Clinton result in 2016.

Trump had demonstratively trapped Latinos, among other things with numerous visits, round tables, and Spanish-language television commercials. In them, he described Biden as a socialist who would turn the United States into a new Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua. As absurd as it may be, something is likely to stick.

“Don’t people understand that Trump is the one who most closely resembles a dictator like Castro? Asks the democrat Annette Collazo, horrified, at the end of the election night. The former teacher, whose parents were from Cuba, was a candidate for parliament Florida State His constituency Hialeah has the highest proportion of Cuban exiles in the entire United States, and Collazo reports that they often slammed the door in his face on his tours.