Why Miami is the bellwether of anti-Trump backlash

Eileen Higgins wasn’t simply elected Miami’s first woman mayor on Tuesday: She will also be the first Democrat to hold the office since 1997, ending a nearly 30-year drought for the party. Higgins beat former city manager Emilio Gonzalez, her Donald Trump-backed opponent, by almost 20 points, 59-41.

It’s the kind of massive Democratic overperformance we’re seeing everywhere, and it’s a shot of energy for the city of Miami and Florida’s long-demoralized Democratic community.

Two major forces contributed to the dramatic Democratic victory, and both should terrify an already skittish Republican Party heading into 2026’s midterm elections.

Voter turnout for Miami’s mayoral races is always low, and for decades that played directly into Republican hands. Miami’s voter registration leans Democratic, but core GOP constituencies—especially the politically dominant Cuban community—have been masters of showing up. Venezuelan and Nicaraguan immigrants, animated by relentless Republican messaging that painted Democrats as “communists,” also became reliable GOP blocs.

And the system itself helped. Elections are held in off-years, with runoffs landing deep into the holiday season. The Republican-Cuban machine loved that setup. In 2021, Republicans won the mayoralty 79-12 with fewer than 25,000 votes cast despite a population of 442,000, per 2020 census stats.

This time, turnout was still anemic—just 36,000 ballots cast in a city of half a million—but something remarkable happened: Even in an election environment tailor-made to benefit Republicans, their vote collapsed. The GOP candidate’s vote total fell from 21,485 in 2021 to just 7,258 on Tuesday, despite the loud backing of both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Republicans simply failed to get their voters to the polls, while Democrats turned theirs out. That alone is a recipe for more upsets in 2026.

But what if Republicans did turn out—and their votes flipped?

Higgins ran hard on Trump’s ongoing ICE raids and on DeSantis’ embrace of that cruelty, including his grotesque Alligator Alcatraz detention center. 

“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told the Associated Press after her victory. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”

Miami voters certainly were, and it doesn’t look like a case of base turnout. All indications are that Republican voters flipped. 

Related | ‘We need to sound the alarm’: GOP panics as election losses pile up

“If you thought the raw percentages looked bad for Republicans, this map is even more alarming,” tweeted Miami-based data scientist Raidel Nabut. “In the Miami mayoral race, Democrats erased the GOP’s gains from last year in Shenandoah, The Roads, and parts of Little Havana. Cuban precincts shifted 15–20 points to the left and Republicans were crushed in Anglo areas like Coconut Grove.”

Little Havana has long been a fortress of Cuban American Republicanism, rooted in decades of preferential immigration treatment and hardened by Cold War-era grievances. That preferential treatment ended in 2017 under President Barack Obama, yet Cuban immigrants still benefited from the Biden administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans.

None of that Biden-era goodwill mattered in 2024, when all three groups voted heavily for Trump. He thanked them by ending the parole program and launching deportations of all three communities (see here, here, and here). Cubans, long accustomed to special treatment from the U.S. government, took particular offense.

Buyer’s remorse quickly followed. A May poll from Florida International University found deep discontent among the Sunshine State’s Venezuelan diaspora.

 “[O]f the Venezuelans who voted for Trump in November—often referred to as MAGAzuelans—half in the FIU survey now say they regret or have mixed feelings about their choice,” reported WLRN. “Almost 40% of them said they will in the future vote for either a Democratic, independent or non-MAGA candidate.”

Many seemed embarrassed by their original vote. Only 32% of Venezuelan respondents who voted in November admitted they voted for Trump, despite his 61% showing in Doral. More than one-fifth refused to say whom they supported.

A July Suffolk University survey found broad Latino discontent as well. A majority of respondents—52% of whom identified as Hispanic or Latino—opposed Trump’s immigration policies. Sixty-one percent said ICE raids had gone too far. Fifty-nine percent opposed the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. And 52% said deportations of Venezuelans, Cubans, and Argentinians made them less likely to support Trump going forward.

And now we have an actual election showing a dramatic 15- to 20-point shift toward Democrats, less than a year into Trump’s presidency. With the economy wobbling, mass deportations underway, and Trump’s overall toxicity deepening, Republicans are staring at a worsening trajectory.

Amazingly, Higgins will be the first non-Latino elected mayor since 1993. She ran against a Latino who backed Trump’s MAGA agenda, and she won on the strength of the Latino vote. It’s absolute poetry. 

But Trump doesn’t give a crap. He’s not on the ballot again, and the only reason he cares about Republicans at all is because they can help carry out his agenda in Congress and in state governments. 

His racism is his prime directive, and he’ll act on it even if it punishes the very communities that foolishly backed him. And the rest of his party, perfectly happy to ride his coattails for years, will now face the consequences of tying themselves to his bigotry.

Related | The blue wave has Trump panicking

“When Cubans in Miami are shifting the same direction as Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in NYC, something significant is happening,” noted Latino GOP consultant Mike Madrid in a tweet on X.

He wrapped it up nicely: “Turns out Latinos are monolithic—they’re monolithically anti-Trump.”