There was a 14-point swing to Trump in Key Biscayne. Is it a realignment?

NEWS ANALYSIS

Does a 14-point swing in the presidential election mean Key Biscayne has turned deep red from its former shade of political purple? Is it a “realization,” a political science term for an election so transformative that it results in a new political power structure that lasts for decades?

Most likely not.

Consider this: Island voters also elected three Democrats to Village Board seats. If there’s one clear takeaway from voting data for Key Biscayne, it’s that the island’s voters seem conflicted about parties, issues — and the extent to which national trends really drive local outcomes.

Democrats are being punished by local and national results. This year, wherever voters were presented with a partisan choice for local office, the “R” seemed to be magic, as GOP candidates for sheriff, supervisor of elections and tax collector won handily. It was a model at the state level.

County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a proud Democrat, is probably thankful she won re-election in August’s low-turnout primary because she might have lost her job if she had a well-funded challenger. aligned with the GOP last Tuesday. The thing that may have saved her is that her office is one of the few top positions in the county that remains nonpartisan.

However, despite this, Donald Trump’s national margin is just 50.4% to 48.0% over Kamala Harris, which shrinks every day as millions of uncounted votes are counted in California . America remains highly polarized, with many living in different information ecosystems.

Yes, Key Biscayners voted to return Donald Trump to the White House by a 10-point margin, while just four years ago, they elected Joe Biden by 4 points. It’s important to note, however, that Islanders often voted Republican in national and state contests, and by larger margins:

And consider, too, that Key Biscayne voters supported Amendment 4 by nearly 60 percent, despite massive opposition from the GOP and many churches, including St. Agnes and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese. Dr. resident Grazie Christie, chosen by Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on the State Board of Education, was featured in campaign videos against restoring abortion rights.

Want more contradictory evidence? Look at the recreational marijuana ballot question. Donald Trump was pro-pot, but that measure was defeated in Key Biscayne. No queue there.

Elections in Key Biscayne are different from national ones, said Matt Bramson, who helped run a local political committee this cycle. “I’m not about problems, because problems are fleeting,” Matt Bramson said. “People vote who are the best people,” looking for solutions to problems, he added.

Downvoting and the party identification factor in local races

But there is still a possibility for electoral contradictions. Election data also shows there was a 32 percent undervote for the Key Biscayne Village Board. And it’s quite possible that this is due to voters’ lack of awareness of party affiliation in the nonpartisan race.

About 6,300 votes remained on the table, undistributed ballots that could have been decisive if you consider that only 222 votes separated third and fourth place. If Nicholas Lopez-Jenkins had found those votes, he would have been sworn in as council next week.

And if you compare partisan races to non-partisan races, partisan contests only had 5-6% undervotes. But for the nonpartisan District 7 County Commission seat, a very important office for Key Biscayne, there was an undervote of nearly 14 percent.

So would the downvote have been lower if there was a “D” or an “R” next to the name? It certainly looks that way.

The Independent reported on the party affiliation of local candidates. It is a public record and was information known to a small group of people in the most involved political class of the island. We felt it was a data point that voters should be aware of.

The fact is that party affiliation, regardless of what one thinks of its relevance, is used by voters to make decisions about candidates. Although it fell short of the 60 percent required for adoption, 55 percent of Floridians voted to make school board elections partisan.

Councilman Ed London, a Republican who was the top vote-getter in the last election, said local races are “popularity contests,” adding that Key Biscayners simply put their pockets first and were willing to overlook Trump’s lies, beliefs and support for the January 6 rioters

“A lot of people I talked to were concerned about the possibility of raising taxes,” he said, noting that the latest round of Trump tax cuts was about to expire and that President Harris would not renew them.

As for the promised mass deportations, London said many saw it as a Trump campaign tactic unlikely to happen — even though they understand deporting cooks, nannies, housekeepers and construction workers would be “very disruptive’ to Key Biscayne.

Exit polls seem to support this view. the APs VoteCast found that Florida voters put economic issues first, with immigration the second-highest concern. Abortion was a distant third concern.

Still, voters here on the island supported candidates who support the current Big Dig plans, which call for higher borrowing and taxes to pay down the debt.

“People feel the government is doing a good job,” said former mayor Mike Davey. “They are worried about the expenses, but they feel we have a good manager and a good board.”

In national politics, this is the “right way/wrong direction” question. And by 2024, that trend number was bad news for incumbents nationwide, but good news in Key Biscayne, where a May survey showed 96 percent rating the island as “a good place to to live”.

So a total realignment? Not in Key Biscayne, but it was more evidence of serious weakness for Democrats in Miami and Florida, where voter turnout was down from 2020.

Editor-in-Chief

Tony Winton is editor-in-chief of the Key Biscayne Independent and president of Miami Fourth Estate, Inc. He previously worked at the Associated Press for three decades, winning several Edward R. Murrow Awards. He was president of the News Media Guild, a journalism trade union, for 10 years. Born in Chicago, he is a graduate of Columbia University. His interests are photography and technology, sailing, cooking and science fiction.