The early returns from Florida seem to consist of early voting in certain counties. Where is Mitt Romney doing best? Two very different counties, where he’s getting 64% of the vote. One is Collier County, whose county seat is Naples–a rich town, with many affluent retirees from the Midwest. It’s the smallest metropolitan area with a Neiman Marcus. Demographically if not meteorologically it resembles Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where Romney grew up.
The other leading Romney county is Miami-Dade County. Yes, there are some parts of Miami-Dade here and there which resemble Bloomfield Hills. But the real story here is that 72% of registered Republicans in Miami-Dade County are Hispanic, with Cuban-Americans by far the largest subgroup. Even in affluent areas like Coral Gables, where former Governor Jeb Bush lives, and Key Biscayne are majority-Hispanic.
Cuban-Americans, like blacks in Democratic primaries, tend to vote near-unanimously and, as I suspected, this tended to be the case this year. Romney was helped by early endorsements from Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart. He may have been helped even more when, in two days just after the South Carolina primary, he first defended Romney against Newt Gingrich’s charge that he was like Charlie Crist and denounced a Gingrich radio ad characterizing Romney as “anti-immigrant.” Rubio technically remained neutral and had kind words to say about Gingrich, but I think Cuban-Americans got a clear signal from him, the results of which are apparent in the election returns.
In 2008 Romney’s best county was Collier, where he got 44% of the vote, and John McCain’s best county was Miami-Dade, whre he got 49%.
