Is Miami Republican Now? Registration Flip and Hispanic Shift

Yes — for the first time in a generation, Miami is a Republican place by the usual measures. In May 2025, Miami-Dade County flipped to a Republican majority in voter registration, and in November 2024 it voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1988. The shift runs down the ballot and across almost every neighborhood in the county, though a Democrat won the Miami mayoral race in December 2025, so the picture is not uniform.

The Registration Flip

Miami-Dade officially became a Republican-majority county in May 2025. Data compiled by Decision Desk HQ showed 464,370 registered Republicans against 440,790 registered Democrats, a lead of about 23,580 voters, with independents and third-party voters making up roughly 33.7% of the electorate.¹ By February 2026 the Republican advantage had grown to more than 43,000, with 450,677 Republicans to 407,346 Democrats.²

The scale of the reversal is striking. As recently as 2018, Democrats in Miami-Dade held a registration lead of nearly 250,000 voters.³ A routine voter roll maintenance that removed more than 172,000 inactive voters accelerated the visible shift, producing a net gain for Republicans of over 38,000 compared to Democrats.¹

How Miami-Dade Actually Voted

The election returns show the change more sharply than registration alone. Hillary Clinton carried Miami-Dade by 29 points in 2016.⁴ Joe Biden’s margin narrowed to about 7 points in 2020, with Biden taking roughly 617,864 votes to Donald Trump’s 532,833. In 2024, Trump won the county 55.2% to Kamala Harris’s 43.7%, an 11-point margin and a swing of roughly 40 points from Clinton’s performance eight years earlier.⁵ Harris became the first Democratic nominee to lose Miami-Dade since Michael Dukakis in 1988.⁶ Among about 3,000 U.S. counties, Miami-Dade ranked 15th for the largest shift toward Republicans between 2016 and 2024.

The change is visible at the neighborhood level. Trump flipped 10 Miami-Dade municipalities from blue to red in 2024. In Doral, his margin grew from 4 points in 2020 to 23. In Hialeah, he moved from 67% to 76%. Unincorporated Miami-Dade, which Biden had carried by 2 points in 2020, went for Trump 59% to 41%. Even Miami Gardens, a Democratic stronghold, saw Harris drop to 75% from Biden’s 85%.⁶

Republicans Now Win the Rest of the Ballot Too

Trump’s win did not stand alone. Republican U.S. Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, and Carlos Giménez were all reelected in 2024 by at least 10 points, with Salazar winning her competitive 27th District by roughly 20.⁷⁵⁸⁹

Why It Happened: Hispanic Voters Moved Right

Miami-Dade is roughly 70% Hispanic, and the movement of that electorate is the main story of the county’s rightward turn.

Cuban Americans Returned to the GOP

Cuban Americans, about half of Miami-Dade’s Hispanic population, were the original base of Republican strength in South Florida, voting Republican at rates above 70% in presidential elections through the early 2000s. From 1980 to 2000, Republican candidates averaged nearly 79% of the vote in the county’s heavily Hispanic precincts. That advantage eroded over time; by 2012, the Cuban American vote had become a near-even split, and the number of Hispanic Democrats in the county grew by 125% between 2000 and 2013.¹⁰

The trend reversed in the Trump era. By 2020, 58% of Cuban registered voters identified as Republican or Republican-leaning.¹¹ Republican messaging branding Democrats as “socialist” resonated with voters whose families had fled left-wing regimes.¹² Eduardo Gamarra, a politics professor at Florida International University, said the word “progressive” is toxic in Florida politics because of its association with leaders like Fidel Castro and Nicolás Maduro.¹³

Newer Immigrant Communities Followed

The arrival of Venezuelan, Colombian, and Nicaraguan immigrants over the past two decades has added Republican-leaning voters to the electorate. Venezuelan Americans in particular have been drawn to the GOP’s vocal opposition to the Maduro regime.¹⁴ Doral, a city of 75,000 where roughly 40% of residents are of Venezuelan origin, has become a focal point of that alignment. An October 2024 poll found that 15.5% of Florida Latino voters had switched parties in the prior year, and among switchers, 42.3% moved from Democrat to Republican.¹³

Miami-Dade’s Black communities remain heavily Democratic and provide the largest Democratic vote share in the county, though turnout and margins there have not fully offset the Hispanic shift.¹⁵

The DeSantis 2022 Preview

Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2022 reelection foreshadowed 2024. He won Miami-Dade by more than 11 points after losing it in 2018, a 16-point swing and his largest improvement in any Florida county. Polling analyst Fernand Amandi called the result a “realignment election” driven by a “sustained effort by Republicans to build broader support” among Hispanic voters.¹⁶ The three most Hispanic counties in Florida — Miami-Dade, Hendry, and Osceola — showed DeSantis’s biggest gains.

The 2025 Mayoral Race Complicates the Picture

The trend is not absolute. In December 2025, Democrat Eileen Higgins, a former Miami-Dade County Commissioner, won the Miami mayoral runoff with 59.5% of the vote, defeating Republican Emilio González by 19 points. She became the first woman elected mayor of Miami and the first Democrat to hold the office in 28 years.¹⁷¹⁸

The race was technically nonpartisan, but both sides treated it as a partisan contest. Trump endorsed González, along with DeSantis, Senators Rick Scott and Ted Cruz, and Congressman Byron Donalds. Higgins had backing from the DNC, Pete Buttigieg, Senator Ruben Gallego, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.¹⁷

Higgins focused on affordability, housing, and government accountability rather than national culture issues, and her campaign vastly outspent González — by one estimate, at a 19-to-1 ratio since September. Immigration also cut differently at the local level: the Trump administration had recently moved to restrict green card and citizenship applications for Cuban, Venezuelan, and Haitian nationals, and Higgins positioned herself as a defender of immigrant residents against those policies.¹⁹

One caveat matters for reading the result. The City of Miami is a small slice of Miami-Dade County; when people say “Miami” in political shorthand, they usually mean the county. Miami-Dade’s Republican registration lead, congressional delegation, and county-office sweep are unchanged by the mayoral outcome. Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried called the win evidence that the “pendulum is swinging,” while Miami-Dade GOP Chair Kevin Cooper dismissed it as a “Democratic city” electing a “Democratic mayor.”¹⁸

Is the Shift Permanent?

The realignment looks structural for now, but not everyone treats it as fixed. Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chair Laura Kelley and Vice Chair Michael Joseph have retooled the local party’s approach heading into 2026, moving toward year-round organizing with community groups, churches, and civic organizations, and rebuilding engagement with Black voters through partners including the Miami-Dade Democratic Black Caucus and the Miami-Dade Haitian Club.²⁰ Statewide, Democratic leaders have identified the cost of groceries, rent, mortgages, and health care as their top 2026 message.²¹ National Democrats view South Florida congressional seats, particularly Salazar’s 27th District, as pickup targets.²²

DeSantis himself gave the caution to his own side: “Boldness is what delivers big victories … but do not take it for granted. All this stuff is reversible, very quickly.”³

1
Florida Phoenix. Miami-Dade Becomes the Latest Florida County To Flip From Blue to Red in Voter Registration
2
Florida Department of State. Voter Registration by County and Party
3
Florida Politics. Ron DeSantis Lauds GOP Gains in Miami-Dade
4
WLRN. Trump Victory in Miami-Dade Part of National Shift Toward Republicans in Majority-Hispanic Counties
5
NBC Miami. A Red Wave Swept Across Miami-Dade County Elections
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Miami Herald. Miami-Dade County Election Results
7
Miami Herald. South Florida Congressional Race Results
8
Florida Senate. Florida Senators
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Florida House of Representatives. Florida Representatives
10
Florida International University. Cuban-American Partisanship
11
Pew Research Center. Most Cuban American Voters Identify as Republican in 2020
12
Florida Trib. Florida’s Political Fault Lines Shift With Swing Hispanic Voters
13
CBS News Miami. Republicans Make Gains, Miami-Dade Hispanic Voters Shift Right
14
WLRN. Venezuelan Americans Are About To Find Out if They Hold Real Political Sway
15
Miami Herald. Haitian American Voters in South Florida
16
Miami Herald. DeSantis Performance in Miami-Dade
17
Florida Politics. Eileen Higgins Shatters Glass Ceiling With Runoff Victory in Miami Mayor’s Race
18
Politico. Democrats Win Miami Mayor
19
WLRN. Miami-Dade Election Results
20
WLRN. Miami-Dade Democrats Target 2026 Midterms With New Organizing Strategy
21
Florida Phoenix. Is Higgins’ Miami Win a Harbinger of Shifting Democratic Fortunes in 2026
22
Los Angeles Times. Three House Republicans From Florida With Cuban Roots Carefully Navigate Trump’s Immigration Policies