Florida had one of the most shocking results of the midterm elections, where Republican Ron DeSantis beat Democratic rising star Andrew Gillum by less than 1 percentage point for Florida governor despite pollsters predicting a comfortable 3-4 point win for Gillum.
While some analysts and Twitter warriors blamed white women for DeSantis’ success, CNN exit polls showed he had a significant gain among minority voters from previous Republican candidates.
CNN exit polls showed DeSantis won 60 percent of the white vote, down from the 64 percent Trump received in 2016, and down 9 percentage points among white women. DeSantis made up from his loss with white voters by spiking his numbers with minorities. DeSantis won 14 percent of black voters and 44 percent of Hispanic voters.
This is a drastic improvement from Trump’s results in 2016 and outgoing Gov. Rick Scott’s results in 2014. DeSantis nearly doubled Trump’s results among black voters and improved among Hispanics by 9 points.
DeSantis improved among all racial demographics from Scott’s re-election in 2014 by 2 points among white voters, 2 points among black voters, and 6 points among Hispanic voters.
Those percentages may be especially reflected in Miami-Dade, Orange, and Osceola counties — three majority-minority counties where DeSantis improved significantly from Trump. In Miami-Dade, DeSantis received 39 percent of the vote, an increase from the 34 percent Trump received. In Osceola county, DeSantis scored 39 percent of the vote, an improvement of 2 points compared with Trump.
Compared with Scott’s performance in 2014, DeSantis made significant gains in Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, Pinellas, Jefferson, and Gadsden counties.
Given the fact that Gillum is an African-American and had massive star power including former President Barack Obama campaigning for him in majority-minority areas of the state, these results are particularly surprising.
There are two possible reasons for this: minority voters who were energized against Trump in the presidential election were not energized for Gillum’s far-left agenda, or support for Trump has increased in the Sunshine State.
DeSantis campaigned as a Trump loyalist who tied himself to the president, even releasing a commercial featuring him reading The Art of the Deal to his young son.
Either way, the media’s accusations of racism and xenophobia did not stick to DeSantis and his surge with minority voters has balanced out his loss with college-educated white women.
Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer based in New York.
