Here are a trend lines for the big urban counties in Florida, the percentages show what the democratic candidate received. A few things to note, Miami-Dade has continued to move toward democrats, like it has been mentioned before on the forum, older conservative Cubans are dying and non-Cuban hispanics or more democratic cubans are replacing them. Broward has remained pretty steady while republicans have narrowed the gap in Palm Beach.
Palm Beach (West Palm Beach):
2000: 62.27%
2004: 60.35%
2008: 61.08%
2012: 58.14%
2016: 56.24%
Why is this the case? It doesn't look like the kind of area that should be trending GOP.
Here is how Palm Beach County voted relative to the nation at each election since 2000:
2000: D+26.45
2004: D+23.77
2008: D+15.60
2012: D+13.15
2016: D+13.26
So while there was a Democratic trend this year it was tiny at 0.11 (which is essentially non-existent) even with Trump as the GOP nominee who I assume is a fairly horrible fit for this kind of place. It does seem that Palm Beach County is slowly drifting Republican. Rubio was less than 10% away from winning it and he did better there than in Miami-Dade despite his Cuban appeal.
I would not be surprised if a Republican was able to carry this county in a convincing state-wide win sometime in the not to distant future. The tightening of the margin in Palm Beach County is probably a significant factor in why Florida has not trended much at all recently and still remaining a Tilt R state in an even year even as Republican support craters in Miami-Dade and Orange.
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