BOCA RATON, Fla. — More than 10 million votes were cast in Florida for the Nov. 5 presidential election.
This year’s election is shining a light on the direction people are leaning politically in the Sunshine State.
"One of the things we generally say about Florida is it's a pinkish state, it's a red-leaning state, but I think at this point you have to indicate that Florida is a red state," said Florida Atlantic University political science professor Kevin Wagner.
In the 2024 election, Trump received more than 6 million votes in Florida, which was about 1.5 million more than Democratic challenger Kamala Harris.
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"There was a substantial and immeasurable movement towards Donald Trump,” said Wagner.
He said Trump got support across various demographics, such as the Latino vote that helped flop Miami-Dade County red, as well as votes from women backing his stance opposing abortion protections.
"His beliefs more align with my beliefs in Christianity,” said Sydney Gordon who supports Trump. "He goes more towards banning abortion because I believe that it's not right to do that."
Wagner said Trump locked in support from young men — with endorsements from big names like Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan.
"I think you saw a pattern where Donald Trump spent a fair amount of time going on mediums especially podcasts where a lot of young male voters spent a lot of their time and that certainly seems to have spent dividends for them," Wagner said. "Maybe the Democrats would have spent more time in some of those mediums than the traditional mediums."
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"Did that help influence our vote?" asked WPTV's Joel Lopez to FAU student and first-time voter Harrison Lurgio who voted for Trump.
"I think it definitely influenced a lot of people’s votes just based on the podcast that’s the younger population that will watch his kind of shows," said Lurgio. "Also Elon being a big factor, being the richest man in the world having some power there. I'm also into crypto and obviously (Trump) supports that."
Other students like Peyton Laporte said he was for Harris and felt she should have campaigned in the Sunshine State.
"Do you think that hurt her?" asked Lopez.
"Yeah, because you have a lot of transplants here and stuff like that so it's why not?" said Laporte. "We used to be a purple state, the whole idea of swings states now is becoming such a mess; only a certain amount of states completely determining our election.'
We took his concerns to Wagner who said campaigning in Florida was an expensive effort.
"You have at least five major media zones here in Florida, so if you're going to campaign here you're going to have to spend a lot of money to reach voters, and every campaign has to make the calculation, 'Can I be competitive enough in Florida to where it's worth investing all of that money?'"
Florida is where Trump calls home, and it was a state that Harris did not hold a campaign visit.
"Do you think if she had done so that would’ve helped her out?" asked Lopez.
"Yeah, probably not," said Wagner. "Because of how red it has become, it’s certainly understandable why her campaign is trying to focus on other states."
Trump won in Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin and Okeechobee counties.
Harris did win in Palm Beach County but by less than 1%.
This is the third consecutive election that Trump has won Florida.
The last time the state went blue was in 2012 for former President Barack Obama.
