Republicans hold onto turnout advantage as Miami-Dade County closes out early voting

South Florida Democrats scrambled to cut into Republicans’ voter-turnout advantage in Miami-Dade County as early voting came to an end on Sunday.

With Election Day just two days away, more than 320,000 Republicans had cast their ballots by mail or in person as early voting centers prepared to close in the evening, according to a tally from the Miami-Dade Elections Department. Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in Florida’s most populous county, had cast about 286,000 votes.

In total, more than 856,000 Miami-Dade residents — about 56% of the county’s active registered voters — voted ahead of Election Day, including some 233,000 people who aren’t affiliated with any political party.

The GOP’s turnout advantage in Miami-Dade, a county that Democrats have long banked on to deliver large numbers of votes for their candidates running statewide, has raised the possibility that former President Donald Trump will become the first Republican presidential candidate in more than three decades to win the county.

While Trump carried Florida in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — and is widely expected to do so again on Tuesday — a victory in Miami-Dade would deal another blow to Florida Democrats, who have struggled to regain their political footing since former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection win in the state.

Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, has largely written off Florida in her presidential campaign this year, opting instead to spend her time and money in the handful of battleground states — like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan — that are expected to decide the ultimate outcome of the election.

The GOP advantage in Miami-Dade could also have major implications for down-ballot races, like the elections for county sheriff, which voters will decide on for the first time in more than half a century, and supervisor of elections.

The GOP’s current early-voting advantage, which amounts to about 4 percentage points in Miami-Dade, owes, at least in part, to the fact that Republicans pushed their voters to head to the polls early.

Appearing near an early-voting site in West Miami on Thursday, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio urged a small crowd of supporters to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, arguing that it was the only sure-fire way to guarantee their votes are counted.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen on Election Day. It could rain. You could get a flat tire. The garbage pickup might be delayed,” Rubio said, cracking a joke about a recent gaffe by President Joe Biden, who in a conference call last week referred to Trump’s supporters as “garbage.”

The surge in Republican turnout was evident in some of Miami-Dade County’s most GOP-leaning neighborhoods. At the Westchester Regional Library in the county’s western suburbs, for example, voter turnout was up 18% over the 2020 early vote. Republicans accounted for roughly 63% of the votes cast there.

At the North Dade Regional Library, one of Miami-Dade’s most Democrat-heavy early-voting sites, turnout was up only about 6% since 2020, though Democratic voters accounted for about 70% of the ballots cast.

Democrats raced in recent weeks to get their early-voting numbers up, making phone calls and canvassing neighborhoods to let voters know they didn’t have to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots. To an extent, it worked. Saturday marked the single-best day of early in-person voting since it began last month, and Democrats narrowed their turnout deficit.

In heavily Democratic Miami Gardens on Sunday, hundreds of voters, campaign workers and volunteers gathered at the North Dade Regional Library for the final day of early in-person voting. Some voters waited in line for upwards of 30 minutes to cast their ballots, while Florida Democratic officials staged a “Souls to the Polls” event replete with food and drinks in an effort to attract more voters.

Among them was Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried, who acknowledged the GOP’s turnout advantage heading into Election Day, but insisted that many Democratic voters are simply waiting until Tuesday to cast their ballots.

She said that, unlike past years, when Republicans turned out in high numbers on Election Day, many Democrats were poised to go out to the polls on Tuesday.

“What happened is the Republicans changed their habits and they voted early as opposed to on Election Day,” she said. “The Democrats have been holding their ballots a little bit longer than normal and then there’s the ceremonial vote to have the first Black female candidate that they’ll be able to vote for for president, and there’s a lot of women and a lot of African Americans who are going to come out on Election Day.”

But Kevin Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County commissioner who worked for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in Florida, said that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to go out and vote on Election Day, predicting that the GOP’s current turnout lead in Miami-Dade has given the party and its candidates an insurmountable advantage overall.

“We have more high-propensity voters than they do” who have yet to vote, he said, “so I think that’s a good reason to believe that our margin is only going to continue to increase.”

There are plenty of voters who have yet to cast their ballots. Only about 54% of registered Democratic voters in Miami-Dade County have gone to the polls, compared to about 65% of registered Republicans.

The number of voters who chose to cast their ballots early and in person was higher this year compared to 2020, when about 513,000 Miami-Dade residents went to the polls early. This year, most of those voters — about 75% — have been Republicans, while Democrats are leading in mail-in balloting.

At the Coral Gables Branch Library late Sunday morning, voters trickled in at a steady pace. Standing outside the library was Cindy Lerner, a candidate for Miami-Dade County Commission from Pinecrest, who said that she was still hopeful that Democrats could make up the voter-turnout gap with Republicans.

She said she was particularly optimistic that a pair of proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot to legalize recreational marijuana use in Florida and overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban would motivate Democrats to get to the polls, either on Sunday or on Election Day.

“Those two amendments are going to draw out a stronger turnout by Democrats,” Lerner said. “That’s what my faith tells me.”

Lerner also said that she believes that the Republicans’ strong turnout numbers in Miami-Dade shouldn’t be taken as a clear sign that Trump is poised to turn the county red.

“I think that there are some very brave Republicans who are standing up to the vitriol and the demented statements coming out of their candidate and saying ‘I just cannot go there,’ and acknowledging that they’re going to be voting for Harris,” Lerner said. “I think there are far more Republicans who aren’t comfortable saying out loud that they’re going to be voting for her.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2024 at 5:28 PM.