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Florida, which has been a red state for almost a decade, may come into play as a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election.
Although Donald Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020 and retains a comfortable lead in polling analyses, Democrats have launched a late-stage campaign push in a bid to win over undecided voters in a state that remains deeply unsatisfied with both political figures.
Voter demographics
According to AAPI Data, Florida’s AAPI population has grown by almost 40% since 2012, and voter eligibility among AAPIs has increased by nearly 30% from 2012 to 2022. AAPIs make up about 3.31% of the state’s electorate.
On a national level, only 39% of contacted Asian American registered voters reported outreach from community groups in 2022. Language barriers also continue to be an issue for potential AAPI voters in Florida, where 53.5% of Asian American adults speak a language other than English at home.
In their campaigns
- Vice President Kamala Harris herself hasn’t visited Florida since she launched her presidential bid. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has gone in her stead. In September, he made a stop in the Villages, a largely Republican 55+ community spanning three counties in central Florida. “It was wild,” Emhoff told donors later. “It was way more people than we thought.”
- Last week, he visited Miami’s Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Accompanied by U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Florida), he sought to draw contrast between the two candidates: “She’s not somebody who debases your community and got up on a debate stage and just slurred the community. It’s outrageous.”
- The Democratic National Committee also launched a voting media campaign in Florida and other states to engage AAPI voters by providing information on polling locations and multilingual advertisements.
- President Joe Biden was elected in 2020 without winning Florida—the first presidential candidate to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992.
- Trump has traveled to Florida on a near-weekly basis in the run-up to Election Day. That included a town hall with Univision, one of the largest Spanish-speaking broadcasters in the U.S.
- Although he still leads in Florida’s polls, former chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele stated in an interview with MSNBC that he believes Harris will flip the key battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia.
On the ground
Policies like Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ SB 264, which bans Chinese nationals without green cards from purchasing property in Florida, have alienated some members of the state’s AAPI community and soured their view of the GOP, causing them to change their votes from Republican to Democrat in the Florida primary.
“Because of this law, I will start to help out, flip every seat I can,” Orlando resident Diana Xue, who this year broke from her pattern of voting Republican, told the South China Morning Post.
“This bill alone helped activate a lot of people in the Chinese American community who historically are not engaged with the government, especially the state government,” noted Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando).
Meanwhile, local organizations including Asian American Pacific Islanders Coming Together (ACT) and Florida Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Progress have partnered with the national advocacy group APIAVote to increase civic engagement through initiatives including virtual events and educational social media posts that encourage AAPIs in Florida to vote.
They’ve have been conducting outreach via phone banking at least twice a week, according to APIAVote’s Florida field organizer Hannah Locop. In an email to The Yappie, Locop emphasized the importance of reminding voters to register by Oct. 7 and informing them that recent changes to Florida state law require voters to re-request mail-in ballots this year.
ACT co-founder Ricky Ly also told The Yappie that community organizations are “trying to meet people where they are” by planning events like a family resource fair and “What’s on My Ballot” workshop for the coming month. Other efforts include encouraging attendees at community events to take a pledge to vote.
Inflation, reproductive rights, and anti-Asian hate crimes are top issues for the AAPI community in Florida, according to Ly. The organization continued to hold canvassing and phone banking events in the days leading up to the election.
Local GOP officials have said they’re “not focused on identity politics” in their get-out-the-vote push.
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