MIAMI – As Florida voters go to the polls on Election Day they will help decide who will be the next President of the United States. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are facing off in the race for the White House.
Going into the general election, there were more than 1 million more registered Republican voters than registered Democrats in the state.
Florida’s voting history
Florida was once considered a pivotal battleground state but has proved reliably Republican in recent years.
In his previous campaigns, Trump won Florida both times. He won in the state in 2016 by a 1.2% margin, and in 2020 he won by 3.3%.
A Democrat hasn’t won the state’s Electoral College votes since 2012, when former President Barack Obama succeeded with a margin of less than one percentage point.
The state’s 30 electoral votes are a coveted component in a successful White House run.
The campaigns
In the final weeks before the election, Trump and Harris hit the campaign trail in strategic battleground states. While Florida was not considered one of them, both campaigns targeted the state to appeal to Black and Latino voters.
A Florida International University poll taken a few weeks before Election Day found that 68% of Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade, which has the largest Hispanic community in the state, said they would vote for Trump, while 23% said they would vote for Harris and 5% were undecided.
The university’s 2016 poll registered 35% approval for Trump, while his 2020 campaign came in at 59%.
Harris, who quickly locked up the Democratic Party’s nomination after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, has focused her attention on a series of battleground states, and the list did not include Florida.
While Trump has broad support among Hispanic voters, Harris still has an advantage, although a slimmer one than Joe Biden’s in 2020, with that demographic.
The Harris campaign bet that Latino men were getting more attuned to policy specifics as the election drew closer, according to the Associated Press. On the campaign trail, Harris said she would work to bring more funds to community banks to help Latino men secure small business loans.
Matt Barreto, a Harris campaign pollster, said they also found that Latino men wanted access to apprenticeships that would give people without college degrees access to a financially stable career, according to the AP. The news agency reported that Harris said she would work to double the number of registered apprenticeships.
Harris also focused on Black men, pitching them forgivable loans for small businesses.
In the closing days of the election, the Trump campaign largely abandoned targeting moderate voters and instead targeted outspoken partisans and young men during rallies and media appearances. Harris, on the other hand, targeted undecided voters, especially women of all education levels, moderates and college-educated suburbanites.
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