Election night started with a major underperformance for Democrats in Miami-Dade County that cost Rep. Donna Shalala her House seat and sank Joe Biden’s hope of an early win.
Miami has always been a bit of a city apart in terms of Latino politics in the United States, with a heavily Cuban American population that has a tradition of Republican voting and deep emotional and intellectual investments in the Latin American Cold War.
But while Cuba-specific issues are tactically central to electoral battles in Florida, the fact is that even before all the results are in, it’s clear Biden’s weakness with Latino voters was broader than that. In South Florida, Biden lost ground with a diverse Hispanic population that includes many families from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, or Colombia, as well as Cuba broadly.
More to the point, Democrats turned in extremely disappointing performances in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, even in the context of a large overall improvement in the state. Trump actually won Zapata County, for example, a small border jurisdiction that’s 84 percent Hispanic and which Hillary Clinton won by 30 points in 2016.
more:
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/5/21548677/trump-hispanic-vote-latinx
