This is going to be a bit long. I wanted to give some insight on how the election is holding up in South Florida. Both presidential candidates, especially Trump, are paying special attention to this region. The most recent Florida poll average has Biden at 48.5 and Trump at 45.8 with Biden leading by 2.7 points. However, this is a very small and volatile margin. A recent poll by FIU, a local university, had Cubans supporting Trump at 59% while Biden at 25%, with 15% undecided. Compared to national polling among Hispanics, Biden leads with 62% and Trump at 26% (as of late September). There is a clear break among Cubans and every other Latinx demographic tending to lean Democratic. Because of communist fearmongering from the right, Cubans lean Republican, and this election has resulted in an especially fervent Cuban pro-Trump bloc in Miami.
The second presidential debate was going to be held in Miami in a town hall format but then canceled when Trump refused to participate in a virtual setting due to COVID concerns over his positive test. Instead, Biden and Trump have organized their own separate town halls... and at the same time. Biden will be on ABC News in Philadelphia, and Trump on NBC in Miami tomorrow night. NBC is facing backlash for agreeing to the same time per Trump's wishes, most likely because Trump wants to brag about ratings and take away voter's ability to pay attention to both candidates at once. Less than two weeks ago, Biden held his own town hall
in Miami in an attempt to win some of those crucial Cuban American
voters. After Trump was released from the hospital, he began campaigning
in Central Florida and will come down for his NBC Miami town hall. Mike
Pence and Eric Trump are also campaigning in Miami.
From personal experience and Politico confirming this, Cuban Facebook and Whatsapp groups are inundated with misinformation about Biden, associating him with communism, pedophilia, and all sorts of other more outlandish conspiracies. I see many posts from this group upset about the lack of media representation for Cuban Trump supporters, saying that the news refuses to cover their organization for the Trump caravans in Miami and other events, as well as saying that the news inaccurately portrays Trump. The support is so strong that an artist even created a salsa song about voting for Trump that went viral on Facebook and was picked up by local media outlets. Another event titled "Fighters Against Socialism" was held in Miami on October 11 and attended by Donald Trump Jr. himself.
There is so much attention paid to Florida, especially the Latinx demographic who makes up 17% of registered voters, because of Florida's 29 electoral votes. Florida has voted for every president since the past couple years. Not winning Florida would make it tremendously difficult for Trump to win given Biden's lead in other states, and no Republican president has won without Florida since 1924. In 2012 and 2016, Obama and Trump have won the state by about a 1% margin. Clearly, this is why Florida is a battleground state.
The last thing I want to note is that mail in voting in Florida has existed before this election. Before, it was typically dominated by Republicans, but this election marks a turn. Democratic voters are turning in more mail in ballots than Republicans: in late September, it was 70,000 to 36,000. Additionally, Democratic affiliation leads Republican by 5.203 to 5.020 million registered voters. Bloomberg also raised $20 million for felons because their voting rights were recently legalized via a constitutional amendment in 2018 but they still have to pay off all fines first, arguably a form of disenfranchisement and poll tax. This election, 2.4 million Democrats have requested mail-in ballots compared with 1.6 million Republicans. However, this is likely due to the politicization of mail in ballots where Republicans will probably make up the difference with in person voting while Democrats are voting early. All of this goes to show the fight for registration with each party, but only voter turnout will tell who wins Florida, and most likely, the presidency.
Below is the infamous "Vote for Trump" salsa song I mentioned that has spurred Cuban-American fervent support for Trump.
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