Both Trump and Biden think they’re about to win Florida. This is why

Republican campaigners have worked hard to turn Latino voters to Trump — and among Latino men, it seems to be working. But Michael Bloomberg’s injection of cash for Biden into the state could have made all the difference

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, celebra un mitin para dirigirse a sus partidarios en el Aeropuerto Ejecutivo Miami-Opa Locka en Miami, Florida (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Every four years, reporters and political players from all over the country flock to Florida to try to figure out who the biggest prize of the swing states will go to.

And as candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden work to get out their voters out right up to the time when polls close, it seems that this year’s interest in the Sunshine State is even higher than usual.

Biden is up by two points in the the most recent polls, according to FiveThirtyEight average. But so was Hillary Clinton in 2016, and she lost the state to Trump by about 100,000 votes.

The Biden campaign got a shake-up in September after polls showed he was trailing behind Clinton’s numbers with Latinos in 2016. And it wasn’t just that the Democrat was failing to inspire Latino voters to go to the ballot box at all: They were, instead, being turned to Trump.

These gains are the result of an aggressive campaign by the GOP, which has focused on targeting Hispanics who have fled socialist regimes such as Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans.

Ads by Trump’s Hispanic outreach team have focused on calling Biden a Castro and Maduro apologist and framing the Democratic Party as run by socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, using terms that are triggers for Miami Hispanics, such as “castro-chavismo.”

Mike Bloomberg jumped to the rescue, committing $100 million to help Biden in the state. With his injection of cash, Florida Democrats worked specifically to counter the GOP’s rhetoric about Democrats being socialists with a slew of ads. They included one by Cuban ex-political prisoner Carlos Alberto Montaner, where he assures his fellow exiles that Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t socialist.

Despite these efforts, Trump’s gains with the Hispanic community are notable — especially among Hispanic men, who are evenly split among Trump and Biden, according to a NYT/Sierra poll. In comparison, Biden leads Trump with Hispanic women by 39 points. 

While Cubans who lean Republican are the biggest minority voting bloc in the state, Puerto Ricans have been increasing their voter numbers in recent years, particularly after Hurricane Maria’s devastation. They are now the second-largest. Democrats are hoping the Puerto Rican vote gives them a boost, but their turnout numbers aren’t generally as high as those of Cubans — and that could be a serious problem.

Democrat losses with Hispanics in the state, coupled with low early turnout in key areas, is a realistic worst-case scenario for Democratic leaders in the state, particularly in Miami-Dade, a reliably blue area. This majority-Hispanic county could see some shifts, particularly in the heavily Cuban areas and others where the GOP has had a strong showing.

Biden needs a big turnout and big-margin wins in solid blue counties to make up for losses in the rest of state. Even though Clinton won the county in 2016 by 29 points, she lost the state by less than two whole percentage points.

President Trump clearly had Dade county in mind on Sunday, when he tweeted: “Biden is a proven Castro puppet! Vote TRUMP” hours before he flew to Miami for a rally at the Miami-Opa-locka Executive Airport.

When voting started, Democrats had a big lead thanks to a record-setting number of absentee ballots cast, but Republicans managed to close the gap thanks to early voting.  As of Sunday, the last day of early voting, Republicans had narrowed the gap to about 95,000 ballots from Democrats.

But it looks like Democrats averted the crisis on the last day of early voting in the state, growing their lead over Republicans to 108,123, with 9 million votes cast as of Monday.

It’s likely that Dade County and a few others in the state will dictate the winner of the election.

Pinellas and Seminole counties have been getting a lot of attention, as both went for Trump in 2016 but Democrat in 2018. 

These are the kind of voters — Trump voters with “buyer’s remorse” — that Democrats need to win back to unseat Trump. And it’s worth bearing in mind that Trump needs Florida to win, but Biden does have a path to the White House without the Sunshine State.

If Biden wins Seminole — and he has been pushing hard for it — he would be the first Democrat to do so since Harry Truman. Florida Democrats have made big pushes to get the Black vote out in that district, including the “Souls to the Polls" initiative, with Jill Biden holding an event with George Floyd’s family in Tallahassee on Sunday. Former President Obama spoke on Monday night and repeated many of the same party lines, telling attendees that “we have the power to change America".

With hours of voting left, overall state turnout in all eligible voters is 60 percent. For Democrats, we’ve seen 64.3 percent; Republicans, 64.1 percent; and NPAs, 49.4 percent. While Democrats outnumber registered Republicans,  the state’s final outcome will probably be decided by the state’s 3.6 million MPA voters, who sent Trump over the winning line in 2016.