Donald Trump lost the Jacksonville vote to Joe Biden, in a stunning reversal of fortune.
Although he won the state of Florida, and did far better than pollsters predicted, Trump may have lost the election.
At this point it is still in doubt but the odds are against a second term for Trump, whether it is decided by the Electoral College, the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives.
Supporters are arguing that voter fraud will be the reason if he loses.
In Jacksonville, however, from all appearance Elections Supervisor Mike Hogan and his crew did a good job of protecting election integrity.
It appears that more voters in the Gateway City preferred Biden.
In one Whitehouse precinct, where Trump got 85 percent of the vote in 2016, he got only 80 percent this year.
On the other hand, one of the most striking points is that in 133 of the 199 precincts, Trump got a larger percentage of the vote than he did four years ago. His supporters did not desert him.
There are more Democrats in Jacksonville. Of the 671,287 registered voters, 279,000 are Democrats and only 239,375 are Republicans. The rest shun both major parties, a telling sign.
Yet, Biden got only 51 percent of the total vote, with 47 percent for Trump.
The Republican president got more black voters than predicted by Democrats, who focused on race during the 2020 campaign, and before.
In precincts with a majority of black voters, Biden got only four times as many votes as Trump. Biden’s strange admonition “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black,” did not hold true here.
Wealthy and middle-class, mostly white precincts went for Trump but 20 percent of the black vote would indicate considerable erosion of the black bloc Democrats have enjoyed for years.
The turnout here was tremendous – 75 percent.
But only 91,370 were cast at the polls on Election Day. Another 138,606 were sent by mail and a whopping 265,240 votes were cast during early voting.
Other races went to conservatives. U.S. Rep. John Rutherford easily turned away an ultraliberal challenger. Staunch conservative state Rep. Jason Fischer easily held his seat.
On local referendums, taxpayers were persuaded to accept a half-cent sales tax to build new schools after 20 years of neglect. They also approved a different method of seating JEA board members, after the privatization scandal.
On statewide constitutional amendments, the only surprise was local voters joining a majority in Florida to approve a new minimum wage that will kill jobs and businesses.
All in all, any claim that Florida or Jacksonville have turned blue is a stretch. The special factor in this election was the enormous amount of hatred against the incumbent president, a result of a four-year campaign conducted by the Democrat Party, media, Big Tech and foreign actors.
