‘We are making history.’ Republicans surge ahead in Miami-Dade early voting

Surging early voting by Republicans in Miami-Dade has Democrats hoping to play catch up before the final votes are counted in a county that has voted blue in every presidential election since the 1990s. 

Republicans have a six-point edge over Democrats in the nearly 500,000 ballots cast in person and by the mail through Monday afternoon. That puts Republican candidates in a much more encouraging battlefield than this time four years ago, when Democrats were ahead by 12 points in the number of ballots cast, according to a Miami Herald tally from 2020. 

READ MORE: DeSantis win in Miami-Dade comes just in time to give Republicans hope for sheriff in ’24

There’s still eight days to go in the election, so early figures offer only a snapshot in time when it comes to the partisan ingredients about Miami-Dade’s 2024 voting and nothing about how people have actually voted.

But two years after Gov. Ron DeSantis stunned local Democrats by winning Miami-Dade by 11 percentage points, Republicans see their current ballot lead as a sign that a red wave is coming.

“We are making history,” Florida Rep. Alex Rizo, a Republican from Hialeah who also serves as chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, said at a get-out-the-rally in Miami on Saturday. “We are going to have the greatest turnout in Miami-Dade history.” 

Democrats call the current turnout numbers an unwelcome surprise, but one that doesn’t guarantee a GOP win in a county where the Democratic Party still leads in voter registration rolls. 

“We still have eight days in front of us,” said Florida Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat from Miami Gardens who is also chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. “We’re going to keep closing the gap. That’s what we’re working toward.”

While Democrats currently lead in the number of mail-in ballots cast, Republicans are dominating the early voting scene across Miami-Dade. Daily reports from the Election Department show GOP strongholds beating early-vote numbers from 2020, while traditionally Democratic areas are mostly trailing. 

At the North Dade Regional Library in Miami Gardens, about three-quarters of the more than 10,000 early voters there have been Democrats. Through Sunday, the overall pace at North Dade barely matches what the site saw in 2020, with a 1% increase in overall turnout compared to four years ago.

Republicans, meanwhile, have swamped the Westchester Regional Library in Miami-Dade’s western suburbs. No early voting site has seen more traffic countywide than that county library, and Republicans account for 7 out of every 10 ballots cast. The overall total there, of nearly 20,000 ballots cast, is 15% higher than at the same time in 2020. 

Once considered the country’s largest – and perhaps most unpredictable – swing state, Florida has swung to the right in recent years. That includes Miami-Dade, the most-populous county in the state and the place that Democrats long relied on to help bolster their statewide vote counts.

GOP outpaces Dems

But so far, voter turnout paints a much different picture this year. As of Monday afternoon, more than 200,000 Republicans have voted either by mail or early in-person compared to about 175,000 Democrats, according to tabulations from the county elections department. While more Democrats — about 89,000 in all — have voted by mail, Republicans have racked up a hefty lead in early voting, with nearly 137,000 of them casting ballots in person.

Republicans overtook Democrats on Thursday in total ballots cast, wiping out the early Democratic advantage in mail-in ballots after three days of GOP-heavy early voting.

On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Florida Democratic Party led a series of “Souls to the Polls” turnout events at Black churches on Sunday in Miami-Dade and across the state. While Democrats did post turnout gains in most Florida counties over the weekend, Miami-Dade was the exception in seeing the GOP increase its lead slightly, according to an analysis by Matthew Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst.

READ MORE: A Black church ‘celebration,’ Souls to the Polls events kick off in South Florida

Chance for Dems ‘to turn it around’

In a social media post on Monday, Isbell called the current situation “bad” for Miami-Dade Democrats. Still, he said Democrats currently have about 40,000 more habitual voters – those who turned out for at least two of the last three presidential elections – than Republicans do.

“Dade DEMs have a chance to turn it around,” he wrote on an X post. 

If it holds, the current GOP edge would likely make Donald Trump the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988, insiders from both parties said. The DeSantis win in Miami-Dade two years ago was the first time a Republican candidate for governor won the county since Coral Gables resident Jeb Bush was reelected as governor in 2002. 

Miami-Dade’s political gravity has favored Republicans in recent years, with Democrats steadily watching their registration advantage erode in a county that Hillary Clinton won by 30 points in 2016 against Trump. 

The most recent tally of active voters showed Democrats with a 35% share of Miami-Dade’s 1.5 million active voters, compared to 31% for Republicans. That’s down sharply from 2020, when Democrats had about 40% of the voters and Republicans less than 30%. President Joe Biden won Miami-Dade by six points in 2020.

Miami-Dade’s current Democratic mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, won her non-partisan seat in the same 2020 election by seven points, just ahead of her party’s presidential candidate. 

Democrats are counting on coattails from Harris to deliver a win for a slate of countywide candidates running in partisan races this year, including for sheriff, tax collector and election supervisor. Those offices currently report to Levine Cava, who won her reelection bid comfortably in August. 

With Republicans ahead so far, GOP leaders see momentum for the countywide races, which include court clerk and property appraiser. Kevin Cabrera, a Republican member of the County Commission who is campaigning for Trump, said he doesn’t see how Democrats can close the gap at this point.

“They keep saying that they’re going to turn out their voters, but when?” said Cabrera, Florida state director for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Levine Cava has been campaigning for countywide Democrats and shifting money from her political campaign to boost turnout. “This is a critically important election for local races and I am encouraging Democrats to do their part and turn out to vote,” she said in a statement Monday. “There are many more Democrats that have not yet voted.” 

Mail ballot changes

Democratic leaders point to the Republican-led change in the state’svoting law in 2021 that ended standing requests for voters to receive mail-in ballots from their local election offices — a switch that led to a drop-off in a voting method that favors Democrats. They also see an impact from a DeSantis ad and turnout operation aimed at defeating proposed constitutional amendments to legalize recreational marijuana and overturn the Legislature’s 2023 six-week abortion ban.

The change in automatic mail-in balloting could prove crucial in Miami-Dade, since that type of voting was key to keeping Miami-Dade blue in 2020. Four years ago, Biden enjoyed a lead of more than 100,000 votes in mail-in balloting, more than enough to overcome a narrow Trump lead in early voting and on Election Day itself. 

As of Monday afternoon, Democrats had cast only 26,000 more mail-in ballots than Republicans had, while the GOP’s 54,000-ballot lead in early voting put Republicans ahead by about 28,000 ballots overall. 

Miami-Dade was an active battlefield in the 2020 presidential election, with Trump campaigning for himself as president in the Miami area and Biden deploying both Harris and Barack Obama to try and energize Democrats. This year, the Harris campaign isn’t contesting Florida, leaving local Democrats to rely on their own resources to drive turnout. 

Jones, the Democratic chair in Miami-Dade, said national dollars make a difference in local turnout. 

“Let’s put it all on the table. The investments in communities matter,” Jones said. He argued that Florida Democrats “have been doing what they can with what they have,” but acknowledged that resources are limited. 

“I don’t wanna say that we’ve been left out in the open in Florida,” he said, “but this is what happens when we don’t see true investments.”

Christian Ulvert, the Levine Cava campaign guru now representing Democratic candidates for sheriff, tax collector and elections supervisor, said Republican turnout has his party needing to play catch up until the end and flip past election patterns on their head.

“This is a big week,” he said. “We’re going to have to run up the score this week. We’re also going to have to dominate on Election Day.”

Miami Herald staff writers Ana Claudia Chacin and Syra Ortiz Blanes contributed to this story.

This story was originally published October 28, 2024 at 6:08 PM.