MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Although Joe Biden won Miami-Dade County by seven percentage points in Tuesday’s Presidential Election, he terribly underperformed there.
Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by 30 points in 2016.
That difference may have cost Biden the highly contested Sunshine State.
The shift, for months, was apparent in Miami-Dade’s Latino neighborhoods.
“Our opponents want to turn us into communist Cuba or socialist Venezuela, and we’re not going to let that happen,” President Trump said last weekend in Opa-locka.
Voters in Miami-Dade responded to four years' worth of Trump’s unrelenting attention. Biden’s deficit was first telegraphed in September by pollster Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Amandi International.
“That one on one engagement where Trump tries to engage more on a visceral, emotional level as the defender, the strongman, who’s going to solve every problem and make everything great, make the economy great, there is a wave buying into that,” Amandi said.
Biden’s slip in Miami-Dade compared to the votes cast for Clinton in 2016 was a likely factor in Democrats losing Florida in the Presidential Election, as well as losing two incumbent Miami-Dade Congressional seats.
Former Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez defeated Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, and former journalist Maria Elvira Salazar upset Donna Shalala.
Republicans framed the narrative, with the socialist and communist labels that hit hard in Latino communities that know dictatorships first-hand.
“However absurd the charges, and it is an absurd one, we all know democrats are not socialist or communist, it’s ridiculous on its face, but you have to push back on those charges,” Amandi said.