‘The stakes are huge.’ Democrats lean on Souls to the Polls in final push for turnout
Last weekend, Democrats and progressive groups in South Florida faced a soggy, stormy early Souls to the Polls weekend. This weekend, they’ll need the sun to shine.
With turnout lagging, much of the Democratic hopes for turning Florida blue could hinge on the success of this weekend’s efforts to turn out voters at Black churches. This year, behind the musical acts, prize giveaways and celebrity guest appearances typical of Souls to the Polls, activists are feeling the pressure.
Days before the election in Miami-Dade County, Democrats are slipping behind in turnout. To date, Miami-Dade Republicans have turned out 64% of their voters. Democrats have turned out 57%, a seven-point gap.
Among Black Democrats, the deficit is even bigger, with about 48% turnout, nine points below the average, according to an analysis for the Miami Herald by Hawkfish, a Democratic tech data firm.
“Whatever effort we felt we lost last weekend, we are pushing for it this weekend ” said Rhonda Thomas, an Opa-locka pastor and executive director of statewide group Faith in Florida, which organizes many Souls to the Polls events. “This Souls to the Polls is so important to Black and brown families. We have so much to lose if we don’t get out to vote.”
Miami-Dade has some 206,000 Black voters — a critical voting bloc in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s base. So far, 48% percent of them have voted. That’s not enough, organizers and party officials say.
Analysts say the gap can “theoretically” be rectified by Souls to the Polls, but voters other than Black Democrats will need to turn out as well. Hispanic turnout in Miami-Dade has also been dominated by Republicans as of late, which worries those closely watching the numbers.
Matthew Isbell, a Democratic data analyst, noted that, despite the worrying early trends for Democrats, history suggests Black voters are less likely to vote by mail and more likely to vote closer to the election and on Election Day.
Whether they will do so in big enough numbers is the question. Miami-Dade Democrats, who have an advantage in registration numbers, still had about an 86,000-vote advantage over Republicans as of Friday. But experts say Biden will need a more substantial margin of victory in Miami-Dade to win Florida and potentially beat President Donald Trump’s chances at re-election.
“We need to come out of early voting Sunday night with a good lead that hopefully can withstand the numbers the Republicans are going to put up at the end of this weekend and into Election Day,” Democratic strategist Reggie Cardozo said. “The stakes are huge.”
The strategist noted that Democrats in Miami-Dade need to have a lead of at least several hundred thousand votes going into Election Day in order to offset Trump’s expected surge in more reliably red parts of the state, like North and Southwest Florida.
Democrats are doing everything they can to avoid a 2016 redux, where more than 100,000 Black voters who cast ballots in 2012 sat the election out.
“It’s going to come down to turnout, as it always does. Especially in Florida,” said Rosy Gonzalez Speers, a senior adviser to the Florida Democratic Party. “We always knew this election was going to be close. Democrats in Florida are not expecting a landslide. This is Florida after all.”
In reliably blue Broward County, home to 310,000 mostly Democratic Black voters, there is also a focus on urging Black voters to the polls. As of Wednesday, total Black voter turnout in Broward County was 51%.
How they’re turning out
Turning out Black voters in South Florida’s communities Sunday will involve more than 500 churches and several caravans of cars leading voters to the polls, said Thomas. She’s already stocked up on rain jackets and umbrellas in case of another wet weekend.
In Lauderdale Lakes, Caribbean Americans for Biden and Harris are hosting a caravan that will depart from the Lauderhill Mall. In Deerfield Beach, voters will march to early voting sites from the city high school. In Pompano Beach, former Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Eddie Jones will give away a pair of Air Jordans sneakers and gospel singer T-Dogg will perform.
In Miami Gardens, a caravan to vote will start at the Calder Casino and end at the North Dade Regional Library, where comedian Marvin Dixon will perform.
On Thursday South Florida Democrats got a boost with a visit from Biden. At Biden’s drive-in rally at Broward College’s north campus on Thursday afternoon, Broward County Mayor Dale Holness mentioned a “surge on the last Sunday for Black votes” and highlighted various Souls-adjacent events.
After speaking at the rally, Biden visited a historically Black Fort Lauderdale neighborhood on Sistrunk Boulevard accompanied by Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem and former Golden State Warriors player Matt Barnes.
“We need to make sure we keep this momentum going, so there’s a continuum of texting, robocalling, and people knocking on their neighbors’ doors,” Biden said. “We’re targeting the votes that are not likely to come out … We need to call the ones who didn’t vote in 2016 or didn’t vote in 2018. Those are the folks we need to go after. If we get those folks to come out, we’re good.”
Before Biden arrived Thursday, former state Sen. Chris Smith, a Black Democrat from Fort Lauderdale, said he thinks the inability to hold events that gather crowds, due to pandemic restrictions, appears to have hurt Biden with Black voters.
“Those types of things get people going,” he said. “COVID has just put us out.”
Beyond in-person events, Biden is still attempting to reach voters through the media.
In a pre-recorded interview with local radio station 99 JAMZ, Biden talked about systemic racism and how to help minority-owned businesses in Florida. He said his hype songs are Respect by Aretha Franklin and Hey Ya! by OutKast.
“We can make this place so much better by just being a little fair and treating people with respect,” he said. “We’ve got to just step up and take this democracy back. It’s about time, and the systemic racism just across the board has to be dealt with. That’s what I’ve done my whole career.”
Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will visit South Florida Saturday.
The Trump effect
Democratic turnout has been huge statewide, largely thanks to a massive push by the party to encourage Democrats to vote by mail. For months, Trump had encouraged just the opposite for Republicans — though at various points he has backtracked and said mail in voting works well in his new home state of Florida.
But Trump’s summer messaging about distrusting mail ballots has reached Black voters, said Melanie McRae of Florida For All, a coalition of groups focused on turning out Black, Hispanic and other voters they characterize as “infrequent.”
McRae said of the 425,000 voters Florida For All has reached statewide, many are those who registered but didn’t vote in 2016, and some are new voters. Many have expressed concern over the validity of voting by mail.
“We are trying to get them to [vote] early and do everything possible to facilitate that,” said McRae. “There is a little bit of the thought that some of the disinformation is working, but turnout is still kick-ass.”
Nelson Diaz, chair of the Miami-Dade County Republicans, said he believes the GOP presence in South Florida has energized voters across the board, including Black voters. He pointed to Trump’s signing of the FUTURE Act in 2019, which made a significant allocation of federal funding for HBCUs permanent.
According to Politifact, it’s not clear how involved Trump was before the legislation hit his desk for a signature.
Diaz also noted that Trump has repeatedly said the Black community has made economic gains during his term, and Black unemployment reached a low last year. Household median income, however, was higher for Black Americans prior to Trump taking office.
“The Democrats have a serious lack of energy and quite frankly, I think Republicans are picking up a lot of their votes in Hispanic and African American communities,” Diaz said. “[Trump] has delivered in ways no president before him has.”
Senior Trump adviser Jason Miller told the Miami Herald last week that the president has created “a level of connection and a level of enthusiasm that voters in the African American and Latino community” by partnering with celebrity rappers and focusing on Biden’s involvement in a 1994 crime bill blamed by some for contributing to mass incarceration.
Miller, however, did not address a question about whether the campaign has repeated its 2016 efforts to dissuade hundreds of thousands of left-leaning Black voters in Florida from voting. A Miami Herald investigation, in cooperation with the U.K.’s Channel 4, found that Trump’s first presidential campaign labeled 658,000 Black Floridians for “deterrence.”
Herald staff writers Bianca Padró Ocasio and David Smiley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 31, 2020 at 6:00 AM.