In All Important Florida, Democrats Lose Ground With Hispanic Voters
In an election where Democrats had one of their best years ever with Hispanic voters across the country, Florida Democrats saw their Hispanic numbers decline. Nationally, Democrats went from 62-36 (26 pts) in 2014 to 69-29 (40 pts) this election. In Florida, Democrats went from 58-38 (20 pts) in 2014 to 54-44 (10 pts) this year. If both Gillum and Nelson end up losing, this significant underperformance with Hispanic voters will have played a major role.
The growth of the Hispanic share of the electorate from 2014 to 2018 from 13% to 15% can be attributed entirely to registration growth, not better turnout operations. And we know from registration data that very few of these new potential voters registered as Republicans. So this growth we saw should have made the Hispanic electorate more Democratic, not less.
Finally, think about what Trump has done in the last 2 years. He has relentlessly attacked immigrants and Hispanics in particular. He grossly mismanaged the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, sending hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing to central Florida. He revoked the temporary status of many immigrants in Florida. Given all this one would have imagined the environment for Democrats to make gains among Hispanics was present in Florida this year, gains which were made elsewhere. Yet we fell back.
I don't know what happened but there needs to be a big conversation about the Democratic Hispanic campaign in Florida with this year. Figuring out what went wrong and correcting it may hold the key to the Presidency in 2020.
PS - am very aware that Florida Hispanic electorate very different from rest of US. I oversaw a $3m ad campaign in Spanish in Florida in 2004 which ran three different sets of ads - one to Pueto Ricans in central Florida, one to Cubans in South Florida, and one to Colombians also in South Florida. Well aware of the differences, and is clear now Mexican American voters rejected the GOP in record numbers this election but something very different happened in Florida. Need to understand why.