Trump got more votes in Palm Beach County than in nine states

South Florida has no say in the Electoral College but the three South Florida counties cast more votes than half the states.

President-elect Donald Trump lost Palm Beach County by about 5,500 votes but he still got more votes in Florida’s fourth-largest county than he did in nine states.

In fact, Trump scored more votes in the three large counties of South Florida — Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward — than he did in 27 states.

For Vice President Kamala Harris, South Florida’s three big counties delivered more votes than she received in 31 states that cast 180 electoral votes but it wasn’t enough to win a single one of Florida’s 30 electoral votes.

Since 1996, Palm Beach County has delivered at least a 95,000-vote bump for the Democratic presidential candidate but Ron DeSantis’ victory here in 2022 showed that those days are over. 

• Harris won Palm Beach County by 5,544 votes. 

• The last time a Democratic presidential candidate didn’t pick up at least 95,000 votes in Palm Beach County was in 1992, when Ross Perot offered a third-party choice that cut Bill Clinton’s margin in the county over George H.W. Bush to 47,500.

Palm Beach County residents gave Trump 366,686 votes. That’s more than any of these nine states: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont or Wyoming.

• Trump won five of those states, securing 16 electoral votes.

• Trump got 7,800 more votes in Palm Beach County than he did in the much more populous Broward County. 

Palm Beach County gave Harris 372,230 votes. That’s more than she got in 12 states, of which she won four, for 14 electoral votes.

• They are: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

• Only 21 states cast more votes for the major party presidential candidates than the three South Florida counties combined, 2.69 million. 

Democratic support remained prominent in Broward County, which gave Harris a 148,000-vote boost. 

That was offset by Miami-Dade, once reliably Democratic, where Trump won by 125,000 votes.

Among other large Florida counties, Harris won Orange County (Orlando), but lost Hillsborough (Tampa), Pinellas (St. Petersburg) and Duval (Jacksonville). 

Local turnout: Palm Beach County voters turned out at an 84 percent clip, a higher turnout than Broward (65%) and Miami-Dade (72%).

Nationwide turnout: As of Monday, the two top candidates had received 146 million votes nationwide, still fewer than the COVID-marred 2020 race, which saw 155.5 million votes cast for the two major party candidates. 

• As of Monday, Harris had gotten 10 million fewer votes than President Joe Biden received in 2020. Trump exceeded his 2020 losing vote total by more than 600,000.

• More than 100 million Americans of voting age did not cast a ballot.