Live updates: What’s happening Wednesday after the election in Florida, Miami and beyond
Keep track of reactions from around South Florida on the results of the election here. This blog will be updated throughout the day.
Michigan called for Biden; six states still in the balance
The Associated Press reported Democrat Joe Biden won the battleground state of Michigan. This is the third state that President Donald Trump won in 2016 that has now been flipped Democrat.
Biden and Trump have not cleared the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. Biden has 253 electoral votes and Trump has 213.
Read the story here.
It wasn’t just Miami-Dade: Trump made gains throughout Florida on path to state victory
Miami-Dade isn’t the only reason why President Donald Trump won Florida, as some are choosing to believe.
Across the state, Trump had a higher margin of victory than he did in 2016 in at least 50 of Florida’s 67 counties, according to a Miami Herald analysis.
The largest swing in Trump’s direction was indeed in Miami-Dade, where Clinton had won by 30 percentage points in 2016. Biden won the county by just seven points.
In Broward County, the largest Democratic stronghold in the state, Trump lost by 30 percentage points — six points less than his margin of defeat in 2016. That difference was significant in a county where nearly one million votes were cast.
Read the story here.
A huge voter turnout for president in Florida and U.S. — but not the biggest. Who was tops?
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger, are still waiting to see who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20 as several states were still counting votes.
But both men and their running mates can take credit for one near historic happenstance: They inspired a massive voter turnout locally in Florida and nationwide.
Note the word “near” next to historic.
There have been bigger turnouts in Florida and nationwide. When were they and who were the winners?
Read the story here.
21 votes separate South Florida Senate candidates. Here’s what that means for recount
Miami Democratic state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez was trailing Republican challenger Ileana Garcia by just 21 votes.
The razor-thin margin of votes means a likely recount in the race for Senate District 37, a seat Rodríguez won four years ago and was fighting to defend.
By law, the first unofficial results must be submitted by the county canvassing board to the state on Friday. It is then that Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White could announce a recount.
A Florida machine recount occurs when the margin is less than or equal to 0.5% total votes. If after a machine recount, the margin is less than or equal to 0.25%, a manual recount occurs. The automatic recount must finish by Nov. 12.
As of Wednesday morning, the margin in Rodríguez’s race was 0.01%.
Read the story here.
How Miami’s rightward shift changed the face of Florida politics
Four years after getting blown out in Miami-Dade County, President Donald Trump rode a groundswell of Hispanic support Tuesday night to the best margins a Republican presidential candidate has seen in Florida’s most populous county in 16 years.
And the rising red tide lifted all ships.
The Miami-Dade GOP also pulled off upsets in two Democratic-leaning congressional districts that Trump lost by double digits four years ago. They were in position to sweep two state Senate races, one of which was headed to a recount. And they won almost every competitive state House seat on the Miami-Dade ballot.
Read the story here.
When will Georgia finish counting?
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the state will be “pushing really hard” to get Georgia votes counted Wednesday at a news conference at the state capitol, The Telegraph reports.
Raffensperger said election officials are working to get the remaining absentee ballots, more than 200,000, counted by the end of the day.
If all of the ballots haven’t been counted by the end of the day Wednesday, Raffensperger said he hopes there will be at least enough votes counted to determine who won the election in Georgia.
Read the story here.
Biden wins Wisconsin, presidency still hangs in balance
Democratic challenger Joe Biden picked up a win in Wisconsin and fought President Donald Trump in other battleground states that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House, the Associated Press reported.
Neither candidate cleared the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, and the margins were tight in several fiercely contested states.
With Wisconsin in Biden’s count, the challenger has 248 electoral votes. Trump has 214.
Read the story here.
Miami mayor welcomes Miami-Dade mayor-elect
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez joined Daniella Levine Cava for a food distribution in Wynwood the morning after her election, posing for photographs with her and Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber.
Miami’s mayor has had a fractured relationship with outgoing county mayor Carlos Gimenez, and he sees more collaboration with the new mayor.
“She’s someone I consider to be easygoing, as opposed to her predecessor. I find her to be collaborative. So you take it one day at a time, one issue at a time,” Suarez told the Miami Herald. “Hopefully we’ll agree, and when we don’t agree I’ll always be respectful, like I’ve always been. I think she’ll be more respectful, as well. So I think that’s going to be a change. She’s not the type of person to be petty or to take things personally.”
— JOEY FLECHAS
Trump tweets ... Biden tweets
Three battlegrounds still in play
The result of the 2020 presidential election remains up in the air as of Wednesday morning — and it could hinge on the outcome in three key states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Biden so far stands at 238 electoral votes and Trump at 213. The winner needs at least 270.
Multiple routes to victory remain open for both candidates and results in other contested states still counting ballots — such as Georgia and North Carolina — could shift those paths. But as Americans wait for answers, The Associated Press reports the results largely hang on those three battlegrounds, all of which are still counting ballots.
Read the rest of the story here.
Nevada stops counting
State officials in Nevada, where Joe Biden holds a sliver of a lead over Donald Trump, 49.3% to 48.7%, have announced they won’t resume counting until Thursday. The state has counted 1,192,195 votes, or 86% of total ballots cast. The remaining votes yet to be counted include mail-in ballots received on Tuesday. Mail-in ballots will also be accepted until Nov. 10.
Hillary Clinton beat Trump in Nevada in 2016 by a margin of 47.9% to 45.5%.
Not so fast
Although President Donald Trump proclaimed “We did win this election” on Tuesday night and falsely claimed that outstanding ballots yet to be counted were fraudulent, not all of his Republican allies agree with him.
“The result of the presidential race will be known after every legally cast vote has been counted,” tweeted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday morning.
According to the New York Times, an estimated 3.8 million votes in states such as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania are yet to be counted as of 9 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Florida Democrats in soul-searching mode
Wednesday morning, Democrat Anna Eskamani, a Florida state representative who was reelected for a second term Tuesday to the District 47 seat, which includes parts of Orlando and Winter Park, tweeted a warning to the Florida Democratic Party, which failed to flip two vulnerable seats that would have pushed them closer to parity in the Florida Senate. The race for a third seat is heading for a recount.
“I’m saying it now. We need a whole new direction for the Florida Democrats,” she wrote. “We are losing too many incredible down ballot elected officials and candidates right now and it’s not OK. I know we have the potential to be better and do better.
Democrat Javier Fernández, who was trounced by his Republican opponent, Ana Maria Rodriguez, for the Senate District 39 seat in South Miami and Key West by a margin of 55% to 42%, agreed with her opinion.
“Total systemic failure,” he wrote. “Party, caucuses, affiliated & independent groups. People have spoken & clearly said they don’t want what we are offering. Unforgivable part is that no one saw this coming. We got beat & bad. We need to own it so we can move on & rebuild.”
Is Miami-Dade going purple?
According to an article in Politico, Trump won the Cuban vote in traditionally blue Miami-Dade by a margin of 120,000. But Cuban votes also had a strong impact on down-ballot races, including the U.S. House District 27 race, where Republican Maria Elvira Salazar ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala after having lost to her in 2018, and Republican Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Ginemez unseated Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida’s 26th Congressional District.
“It’s fair to say Miami-Dade is now a purple county. Yeah, it’s competitive,” Frederick Vélez III, national director of civic engagement for the Hispanic Federation, a nonpartisan Latino organization, told Politico.
The Cuban vote was not enough to help the Cuban-American Esteban Bovo, who lost the race for Miami-Dade County mayor to Daniella Levine Cava.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 9:25 AM.
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