While Democratic support among Hispanics has improved over the past decade, from the low 60s to the high 60s, there is evidence suggesting that those gains cannot be relied upon in future elections.

In the midterm elections, Florida became the prime example of such unreliability, as Republicans demonstrated they could buck state and national trends to make substantial gains among Hispanics.

Republicans won two close statewide races in Florida in 2018, one for senate and one for governor — despite the gradual erosion of Republican support among Cuban-Americans in the state and despite the continuing influx of pro-Democratic Puerto Ricans in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, formerly the New Democrat Network, a pro-Democratic think tank, wrote, “In All Important Florida, Democrats Lose Ground With Hispanic Voters” a month after the 2018 election:

In an election where Democrats had one of their best years ever with Hispanic voters across the country, Florida Democrats saw their Hispanic numbers decline. Nationally, Democrats went from 62-36 (26 pts) in 2014 to 69-29 (40 pts) this election. In Florida, Democrats went from 58-38 (20 pts) in 2014 to 54-44 (10 pts) this year.

As Rosenberg pointed out, this shift occurred despite the fact that Trump did everything possible to alienate Latinos, along with undercutting Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, the winning Republican candidates for Senate and governor.

Rosenberg noted that Trump had

relentlessly attacked immigrants and Hispanics in particular. He grossly mismanaged the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, sending hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing to Central Florida. He revoked the temporary status of many immigrants in Florida. Given all this, one would have imagined the environment for Democrats to make gains among Hispanics was present in Florida this year, gains which were made elsewhere. Yet we fell back.

By all accounts, Scott and DeSantis campaigned almost daily in Hispanic precincts, while their Democratic opponents, Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum, took the Hispanic vote for granted.

“We had no infrastructure,” Christian Ulvert, Gillum’s director for Spanish-language media, told Politico:

And honestly, Democrats have been playing catch-up on Hispanic outreach for two decades, because Republicans have invested in it. You can’t close that gap overnight.

Politico described Nelson’s bid for a fourth term as “a uniquely lazy campaign that made laughably ineffectual attempts to engage with Hispanics.”

Melissa Michelson, a political scientist at Menlo College in California and president of the Latino caucus of the American Political Science Association, described in an email the changing political orientation of Florida’s Cuban-Americans.