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TALLAHASSEE, Florida: Perhaps only in Florida a loss of less than 4 percentage points is considered a public beating.
In a state famous for its narrow margins, the size of Joe Biden’s loss to Donald Trump was humiliating for Democrats and sent many seeking answers about how they failed to close the deal with voters again.
Democrats focused on two clear explanations: Biden didn’t connect with Latino voters in the state, and he performed particularly poorly with Cuban voters in South Florida. They also questioned the party’s decision to freeze the organization in person during the worst of the pandemic, a decision that prevented them from reaching out to voters.
“Clearly, Biden wasn’t able to capture the imagination of the Florida electorate and create the kind of enthusiasm to come out and vote for Biden, as Trump did with his supporter base in the state,” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based . Democratic pollster.
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“It is an unacceptable record of uselessness. What makes it so annoying is that the problems that need to be fixed are so obvious. But they just don’t fix. “
Amandi focused on the struggles of Biden’s campaign to connect with Hispanic voters in the state.
Trump and the Republicans battered Biden for months with claims that suggested he was a “socialist” and would deal with the left wing of the Democratic Party. The attacks brought additional power to Cuban and Venezuelan Americans, who associate the labels with authoritarian and corrupt Latin American leaders.
Biden’s weakness was most evident in his poor performance in Miami-Dade County, which has the deepest concentration of Hispanic voters in the state, particularly Cuban-Americans.
Biden won the county, the most populous in the state, by just 7 percentage points, compared to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 30-point margin of victory four years ago against Trump.
AP VoteCast, a Florida electorate poll, found that Trump won 58 percent of Cuban-American voters statewide, while voters with South American heritage are evenly divided between Biden and Trump. The poll said Puerto Rican voters backed Biden by roughly two to one.
Relatively poor performance in South Florida hurt other Democrats, as Republicans swept two incumbents from Congress in the Miami area, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
“When you look at Miami-Dade in particular, there was a lot of hype across the aisle that was about socialism and, in some cases, even the word communism,” said Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor who has held three offices. across the state.
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“I think it obviously had an impact,” Crist said. “When they attack you, you have to fight back. I’m not sure how many of the counterattacks occurred on our side.”
Trump had an advantage in his adoptive home state and used it to make inroads with the Hispanic community, which represents about 1 in 5 voters in Florida.
Biden got off to a late start. Not only did he have to secure his party’s nomination, but he was barred from a more aggressive campaign due to the coronavirus pandemic; Florida was off limits for a time as the epicenter of the outbreak.
While Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris eventually visited the key state on the battlefield, much of the campaign was carried out virtually due to concerns about the pandemic. When Republicans went door-to-door again, Democrats stayed on the sidelines.
But the problems predate the pandemic, said State Sen. Annette Taddeo, who has long criticized her party’s approach to campaigning.
“You need a constant presence and you cannot take minority communities for granted,” he said. “You can’t come two months before an election and hope to get these communities excited.”
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, credits Trump’s campaign with generating buzz, even in the midst of a pandemic.
“He had a really significant victory in the state of Florida,” said DeSantis, a key Trump ally.
“I think their big storm, in which the scope of their campaign is important, in their case, do these big events … the electricity that they generated,” he said.
Some Democrats also credit Republicans for registering thousands of new voters and reducing the voter registration advantage Democrats have long had.
But Democrats also turned around Republicans on absentee ballot requests, a key Republican strength in previous election cycles that helped drive turnout. While more Democrats voted by mail before Tuesday’s election, Republicans also took a quick turn to get more members of their party to vote in person during the early voting period.
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While Democrats have long outnumbered Republicans, they have had little to show for it. In 2016, Clinton narrowly lost to Trump. Two years ago, Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum, who would have been Florida’s first black governor, narrowly lost to DeSantis. US Senator Bill Nelson also narrowly missed his re-election bid.
As it stands, Democrats now hold only one office in the entire state: the Commissioner of Agriculture, which is held by Nikki Fried, who is said to be considering a possible bid for higher office. But his success could hinge on what Democrats learn from his latest defeats.
For Taddeo, the Democratic state senator, it means going back to basics. “It’s a math problem,” he said. “We need to register voters all the time.”
