Latino Americans dash Democrat hopes of a landslide Biden victory and give Trump a lifeline

If this election is won by Donald Trump, it will have come down to a remarkable boost from some ethnic minority communities, jarring with the mainstream media narrative of his first-term presidency. Trump’s victory in Florida, a key battleground state, is in large part due to his dramatic over performance in Miami-Dade County, where it is believed an historic number of Latino voters voted for the Republican candidate.

Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade, traditionally a Democratic county, by a 30-point margin in 2016. This year, with over 90 per cent of the votes reported, that lead has shrunk to under 10-points under Biden. This suggests that Trump’s efforts this year to make inroads into the area’s large Latino community have paid off.

In addition, Cuban Americans, who have historically leaned more Republican than Latinos from other countries of origin, may have been energised to vote out of fear of “socialist” policies under a Biden administration. Since early June, the Trump campaign has been running Spanish-language ads in Florida likening Biden to left-wing Latin American dictators such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Trump has also increased his share of the vote among black men and women since 2016, according to exit polls. These are marginal shifts, with increases of no larger than 5 per cent, but they may nonetheless play a crucial role in tight races in southern states with large African American populations, such as Georgia.

Meanwhile, in the Rust Belt States, it seems the president is holding on to the vast majority, if not all, of his white working class base. In two predominantly white working class Ohio counties bordering Pennsylvania – Trumbull County and Ashtabula County – Trump has increased his margin of victory since 2016, indicating a better-than-expected result for the president across the rust-belt.

Trump has won by more than ten points in Trumbull, compared to a six point margin in 2016, and by 23 points in Ashtabula, compared to a 19 point margin in 2016.

Republicans have long worried that Trump’s strategy of appealing to his white working class base would cost them a long-term electoral strategy. Last night, many of them will be looking at the coalition between Latinos in Florida, a small but not-insignificant subsection of black voters across the South, and white working class voters in the north, and seeing a much more sustainable electoral foundation for their party in the future.

Commentators who for decades predicted that demographic changes in Florida and elsewhere would lead to permanent Democratic majorities will now have to account for ethnic minority communities who are becoming some of the Republicans’ most loyal voter bases, superseding white suburban voters.

Whatever happens in the coming days, the Republican Party can legitimately claim to have made real in-roads into communities of colour. Donald Trump, of all people, has begun the slow process of winning the ideological battle in the communities that will define America’s future. His base today is much darker, and speaks more languages, than four years ago.