By: Mel Tenkoff & Jaslyn Troung
A red wave swept through Miami-Dade County on Election Day, with President-elect Donald Trump not only clinching the county’s first Republican presidential win since George H.W. Bush 36 years ago, but also improving his margins across almost every city in Miami-Dade with 55% of the entire vote.
Despite Florida’s Democrats’ reliance on Miami-Dade to remain its historic blue, as it did for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Joe Biden in 2020, multiple cities throughout the county including Aventura, Homestead, Key Biscayne, Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest went from siding with the Democratic candidate in past years to Trump in 2024.
Of these cities, Coral Gables — home to the University of Miami — also saw a shift in voter preference.
“Biden got 53% of the vote in 2020 to Trump’s 47%. On Tuesday, Trump emerged the narrow [Coral] Gables winner, taking 50% of the ballots, compared to 49% for [Kamala] Harris,” according to The Miami Herald.
“A big part of [Trump’s win] has to be the Cuban community in Miami and the desire to not revert back into ways of socialism, which have been associated with the Democratic party,” said Osei Allen, a junior at UM studying political science and psychology. “A lot of Trump’s appeal has definitely been straying towards the right side of things.”
The Miami Hurricane spoke to voters at Versailles on Election night and found that many shared the same sentiment as Allen.
Jeremiah Andrew Carrillo, a 28-year-old Trump voter, said, “United States citizens are tired of being afraid and tied down with their pocketbooks, and not being able to express freedoms they were able to since the founding of this country.”
Many voters pointed to the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies, like increased government spending, progressive healthcare reforms and climate change regulations as key factors driving them to vote for Trump.
Others, like Joseph Higgins, a first-time voter in Miami-Dade County, attributed their support for Trump to Harris’ handling of key foreign and domestic issues during her time in office.
“The three main objectives that Kamala was in charge of were the borders, the Ukraine war and the US pullout in the Middle East,” Higgins said. “What Trump wanted to do in the Middle East was to slowly pull out the troops, but what she did was pull out the troops immediately, which was not smart.”
This right-leaning shift throughout the county is reflected not only in the presidential vote but also in the failure of progressive measures across the state like Amendments 3 and 4, which aimed to legalize the use of recreational marijuana and to allow abortion until viability.
However, leading up to this election, many voters did not know what result to expect for either these measures or a Harris or Trump victory.
Sebastian Gonzalez, a sophomore majoring in political science and public relations said that “it’s hard to accurately depict what is going to happen on election night and there could always be a margin of error,” regarding the projection of which candidate would win in the swing states and Miami-Dade.
Former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to win Florida as a whole in 2008 and 2012, but since then, what Allen refers to as the “domination of the Trump campaign,” has made the state increasingly red and out of reach for Democrats.
“At the end of the day, a big part of this has to do with how well certain candidates align at the time. Considering the circumstances — for example, having Kamala represent the Democratic party — kind of resulted in not the strongest of support,” Allen said. “I don’t necessarily think it’s going to be a major trend towards red for the next eight to twelve years, I think it’s just due to the circumstances.”
Others have expressed that Trump’s appeal is because of people realizing that the Democrats need to change their strategy.
“I think [Trump’s win] is a mixture of his hold on the Republican party and the need for the Democratic party to change its leadership within the party,” Gonzalez said.
With the results of the presidential election, the Democrats may need to realign their strategy and message to their demographics to be successful in the future.
“[Democrats] have to be a lot more direct in terms of what demographics of voters make or break their success, particularly in the swing states,” Allen said. “Republicans have done a really solid job of appealing to those less represented groups.”