Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins, a Democrat and former Miami-Dade County commissioner smiles onstage after a landslide win in the runoff race for Miami mayor on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025.
To become Miami’s first Democrat mayor in nearly three decades, Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins dominated Democratic districts, won over independents and made inroads to Republican enclaves in a race that President Donald Trump wanted her to lose.
Precinct data from Tuesday’s election shows Higgins ran up the score with fellow Democrats and tamped down the advantage her Republican opponent, former Miami City Manager Emilio González, had with GOP voters after he won Trump’s endorsement. The result was a 19-point landslide win for Higgins, a two-term Miami-Dade County commissioner who has represented parts of the city of Miami since 2018.
Here are some of the notable findings from a Miami Herald analysis of precinct data:
Independents broke for the Democrat in Miami’s mayor race
In precincts with an outsized number of independent voters — at least 40% — Higgins won easily, 60% to González’s 40%.
That’s a key voter bloc for any candidate running citywide. In Miami, Democrats make up the highest number of registered voters, but there are more registered independents (also called no party affiliation voters or NPAs) than there are Republicans.
Higgins swamped González in Miami’s bluest neighborhoods
In precincts where at least 45% of the voters are Democrats, Higgins ran up the score, taking nearly 90% of the vote.
Even with Trump calling González “FANTASTIC,” the Republican didn’t enjoy that kind of advantage in GOP-heavy precincts, where he took about 65% of the vote. That left Higgins collecting one of every three votes cast in the city’s red precincts, compared to the one in 10 González took in the blue precincts.
The breakdown was similar when comparing the mayor’s race to how Miami voted in the 2024 presidential race. Kamala Harris won the city by just 1% last year. In precincts the Democratic nominee won, Higgins took almost 80% of the vote. In Trump precincts, González got just 60%.
Higgins winning the independent vote is a warning sign on immigration for Republicans in Miami-Dade County, said Jesse Manzano-Plaza, a GOP political consultant who ran two successful citywide campaigns for Miami’s outgoing Republican mayor, Francis Suarez, in 2017 and 2021.
In a city where more than half of residents are born outside the United States, Manzano-Plaza said, there’s likely political backlash against Trump’s aggressive deportation crackdown on immigrants who are employed with no criminal record.
“We’ve got to be careful as Republicans with this issue,” he said. “The data from this election seems to show that those same Hispanic independents who broke for Trump last year are now turning the other way.”
Heavily Cuban American precincts stuck with the GOP
Just as Higgins mitigated her losses in Republican precincts, she also avoided a total wipeout in Miami’s all-important bloc of Cuban American voters.
Using precinct and Census data, Democratic elections analyst Matthew Isbell estimated González, who is Cuban American, won about 62% of the vote in precincts where at least half of the residents are Cuban-born. Higgins got about 38% of those votes, Isbell estimated.
Other demographic groups were more lopsided: In precincts where at least 45% of voters are Black, Higgins overwhelmed González by winning nine out of every 10 votes cast. In precincts where white voters are the largest bloc, she took almost 70% of the vote, according to the Herald analysis.
For precincts where Hispanic voters are the top bloc, the results were similar to the Cuban American precincts. González took about 60% of the vote to the 40% that went for Higgins.
The new Miami swing voter: seniors
Of all the Miami demographic groups tracked in the Herald analysis of precinct data, the closest contest was for voters over the age of 60. Higgins had the edge in that showdown, taking 52% to the 48% that went to González.
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