Hip-hop Trump: Black support in Miami-Dade County helped put Florida in the win column

Republicans routinely fare poorly with black voters.

Democratic presidential candidates have received an average of nearly 90% of the black vote for more than five decades.

But on this Election Day, President Trump improved his performance in majority black precincts in Florida's Miami-Dade County, winning just over 13% of the vote compared to just under 7% in 2016, the Miami Herald reported.

"In Miami Gardens, the largest majority black city in Florida, Trump captured nearly 15% of the vote, compared to just over 7% in 2016, with the vast majority of votes counted," the paper reported.

Trump's good numbers were in part the result of a strong effort by his campaign to connect with potential black voters.

But successful policy measures by Trump and his administration were arguably more effective. Among them were criminal justice reform and an economic policy that resulted in record-low unemployment for black Americans — and more recently a so-called "Platinum Plan" that attempts to provide more access to capital for black-owned businesses and a steady federal funding stream for Historically Black Colleges.

Trump's efforts have won him support from such influential leaders in the black community as former football stars Herschel Walker and entertainers Kayne West and Lil Wayne.

Republican presidential candidates have long tried to woo the community, but without much zeal — or success.

George W. Bush got 9% of the black vote in 2000, then made a heavy outreach and soared in 2004 — to 11%.

In 2012, Mitt Romney pledged to help the black community more than had President Barack Obama (who got 95% of the 2008 vote). "If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone," the Republican candidate said at an NAACP speech. "Instead, it's worse for African-Americans in almost every way. The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average income, and median family wealth are all worse for the black community."

Romney got a paltry 6% of the black vote.

Wrote the Herald: "In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade County over Donald Trump by about 30 percentage points, despite losing Florida. Democrats didn't expect 2020 nominee Joe Biden to do quite that well in Florida's largest county. But they couldn't have imagined Trump would cut into that margin by more than 20 points, as he did on Tuesday in a disastrous result for Biden and Florida Democrats."

In the end, Biden led Trump in Miami-Dade by about 7 percentage points.

The president was also greatly helped by the Hispanic vote.

"Trump's success in Miami-Dade was driven in part by gains in majority Hispanic districts, where he won nearly 55% of the vote, and majority White precincts, where he took nearly 43% of the vote with most results reported," the Herald wrote. "Hillary Clinton won roughly 56% of the vote in these majority Hispanic precincts in 2016 and nearly 60% of the vote in these majority White precincts in 2016."

"You've got to go in and grab voters and pull them to the polls in Miami-Dade," Democratic strategist Reggie Cardozo told the paper. "The times Democrats have been successful is when we have an extensive field operation. With COVID-19, we didn’t have that and if they did, it was only toward the end."