Poll shows why Miami-Dade might be Clinton’s favorite Florida county

Hillary Clinton needs Florida’s largest county to deliver big for her come Election Day — and Miami-Dade seems poised to do so.

Clinton wallops Trump by 30 percentage points, according to a new WLRN-Univision 23 poll released Tuesday that shows her ahead by 58-28 percent. That margin is 6 points wider than President Barack Obama’s over Mitt Romney in 2012, when Obama won Miami-Dade by 62-38 percent. Obama went on to victory in Florida by a single point.

Clinton’s spread over Trump is “the most that any Democrat has ever gotten, dating back to the 2000 election,” in Miami-Dade, said Fernand Amandi, the Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with his firm, Bendixen & Amandi International. Obama bested John McCain in Miami-Dade by 16 points in 2008. John Kerry defeated George W. Bush by only 6 points in 2004, as Al Gore did against Bush in 2000. Kerry and Gore lost.

In the poll, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein drew a combined 5 percent support. Clinton leads Trump by about 4 percentage points statewide, a Real Clear Politics polling average shows.

Blue Miami-Dade is no bellwether. But a Democrat could amass so many votes in Miami-Dade — and neighboring Broward and Palm Beach — to make it impossible for a Republican to match them in redder, less populated Florida counties.

“That’s why I think it’s a potential indicator that she’s likely to win the state,” Amandi said. (Broward is bluer, but Miami-Dade has more voters.)

A Democrat who can’t run up the score in Miami-Dade is in trouble. And that’s what the poll portends for U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, who’s tied 46-46 percent in the county against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Statewide polls have consistently shown Rubio edging Murphy.

Amandi noted that Rubio “is vastly overperforming Donald Trump — by almost 20 points” in Rubio’s home county. Fifty-three percent of poll respondents say they don’t know Murphy, who grew up in Miami. Hispanics prefer Rubio by 59-32 percent.

Miami-Dade voters like Clinton, who is generally disliked in state and national polls. Sixty-two percent of poll respondents have a favorable opinion of her, compared to 38 percent who view her unfavorably.

Trump, on the other hand, is seen favorably by only 27 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 71 percent. An astonishing majority of those who dislike Trump — 64 percent — view him “very” unfavorably. Even 51 percent of Republicans say they dislike him.

“We’ve never seen numbers like these before,” Amandi said. “Ever, ever, ever, ever.”

Clinton’s weakest demographic in the poll are voters of Cuban descent, who favor Trump by 47-41 percent. To be successful in Florida, Republican candidates are usually expected to win an outright majority of Cuban Americans, the most conservative of all Hispanics who comprise the vast majority of Miami-Dade Republicans.

The pollster interviewed 600 likely voters in English and Spanish from Oct. 15-17. The poll’s error margin is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In May, the last time the firm polled the race in Miami-Dade, Clinton led by 52-25 percent. The difference now: The proportion of undecided voters has gone down from 23 percent to 7 percent.

This story was originally published October 19, 2016 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Poll shows why Miami-Dade might be Clinton’s favorite Florida county."