President Trump may not earn four more years in the White House, but he gave the Republican Party perhaps something far more valuable: lessons on how to win elections for decades to come.
As results from Florida began trickling in Tuesday night, a dramatic shift was taking place within the Republican coalition. Polls predicted a narrow race there, with some giving Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden a lead by as much as 5 points. But after Miami-Dade County’s results finalized — the first votes in the state to be counted — it became clear that Trump’s numbers with minorities were some of the best in GOP history.
In 2016, Trump lost Miami, which is 70% Hispanic, against Hillary Clinton by 30 percentage points. By the end of Tuesday night, it appeared Trump earned 43% of the vote, largely due to an extraordinary performance with Latino and black voters in the area. Those numbers bolstered GOP candidates down the ballot, with House candidates such as Carlos Gimenez, the Miami-Dade County mayor, beating incumbent Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Next door, in Florida’s 27th District, Republicans flipped back Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala’s seat to challenger Maria Elvira Salazar. The 6-point victory in the district that’s nearly 80% minority once again highlighted the GOP’s strength with Hispanic and black voters.
Despite Florida’s longtime reputation as unpredictable and unique in its voters’ behavior, Trump also replicated his Florida performance among Latinos in many Texas districts. As suburban whites flocked toward Biden, some majority-minority counties backed Trump. In Zapata County in the Rio Grande Valley, the second-most Hispanic county in the country, Trump won by 5 points. By comparison, Hillary Clinton won there in 2016 by 33 points, and former President Barack Obama crushed Sen. Mitt Romney by 43 points in 2012.
Another Texan county nearby, Starr County, saw a massive swing to Trump’s favor as well. Although Biden earned 52% of the vote there, according to early figures, Trump’s 47% share is a 27-point swing in favor of the GOP compared to 2016.
Preliminary numbers show the GOP earned the highest share of nonwhite voters since President Richard Nixon’s failed run in 1960, a pre-civil rights movement period when a number of black people supported Republicans due to the Democratic Party’s legacy with slavery and discrimination. Trump’s share of the minority vote creates a nearly 20% increase from 2016, which was also his party’s best showing among black and Hispanic people since 1960. In 2012, Romney garnered just 11% of minority votes compared to the 10% former Sen. John McCain earned in 2008.
Although it remains unclear who will be deemed the victor of the election and crucially whether Trump’s performance with minorities can make up for his bleeding with college-educated white people, other Republican officeholders have laid down their markers on what they believe the future of their party will look like.
Just before 11 p.m., when Trump’s victory in Florida and Texas seemed all but assured, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted that Republicans belong to “a working class party now. That’s the future.”
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, pleased with his home state’s results, wrote, “#Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP. A Party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS.”
Should Biden be declared the victor, Trump’s loss still marks a major rebuke to the establishment Republicans who endorsed the infamous 100-page autopsy report in 2012. Released roughly five months after Romney’s loss to Obama, its authors expressed concern about “public perception of the [Republican] Party.”
“We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only,” the report read. “We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.”
Trump, who ran on a nativist platform in 2016 and prioritized deportations and border control during his first term in office, demonstrated how many minority voters are closer to the GOP’s white base on issues like immigration than the party’s historical commitment to entitlement reform and free trade. And just as Trump’s opposition to trade deals like NAFTA created tensions within his party, early evidence suggests that the party’s minority supporters often support progressive economic policies opposed by businesses or wealthy donors.
Aside from the president’s victory and two House pickups for the GOP in Florida, voters there overwhelmingly supported an initiative long opposed by the party for years: raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
