Originally published 2020-09-14.
In mid-September 2020, less than two months before election day, Michael Bloomberg committed at least $100 million to help Joe Biden win Florida. The money was not a cheque handed to the Biden campaign. According to the Associated Press, a Bloomberg adviser said most of it would pay for television and digital advertising aimed at Florida voters, timed to land before ballots began to be cast in large numbers. Trump went on to carry Florida by about 3.4 points, a wider margin than in 2016, even as Biden won the presidency.
What Bloomberg actually pledged
The AP report of 13 September 2020 described a commitment to spend "at least" $100 million in a single state. Bloomberg, the founder of the financial data company that carries his name and a three-term mayor of New York City, had already been one of the biggest political spenders in the country. He had poured roughly $1 billion of his own fortune into his short-lived bid for the Democratic nomination, dropped out in March 2020 and endorsed Biden.
The same report listed other gifts he had already made in that cycle: about $18 million transferred to the Democratic National Committee, $500,000 to Voto Latino, and $2 million each to the groups Collective Future and Swing Left. Separately he had pledged $60 million for House races, while Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control group he funds, had committed another $60 million.
Many headlines at the time said Bloomberg had "donated $100 million to the Biden campaign". That wording is misleading. A single person cannot legally give that kind of sum straight to a presidential campaign.
Why it was spending, not a donation
US federal law caps what an individual can give directly to a candidate. In the 2020 cycle the limit was $2,800 per election. What the law does not cap is independent spending: money a wealthy donor spends on ads or organising that is not coordinated with the campaign itself. Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 and a related appeals court decision the same year, super PACs and other outside groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts on that basis.
So when a billionaire "helps" a candidate on this scale, the money normally flows through outside groups or the donor's own advertising operation. The candidate benefits from the ads, but the campaign does not control the budget or the message. That distinction matters for readers trying to judge claims about who bought what. It also explains why the figures announced in the press are commitments rather than receipts: the final amount spent shows up later, in filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Why Florida mattered so much
In 2020 Florida carried 29 electoral votes. Only California (55) and Texas (38) had more; New York also had 29. With California safely Democratic and Texas still leaning Republican, Florida was the biggest prize that both parties thought they could win. The AP noted that a Biden victory there would make Trump's path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win far harder.
The state also has a long record of photo finishes. In 2000 George W. Bush won Florida, and with it the presidency, by 537 votes out of almost six million cast, after weeks of recounts and a Supreme Court ruling. Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012; Trump took it back in 2016 by just over a point.
Timing explained the rush. With the pandemic driving record use of postal ballots, voting in Florida began weeks before 3 November. Money spent in September could reach people before they had already filled in their ballots, which is why the pledge was framed as a push "before early voting".
How Trump and Republicans responded
Trump answered the news on Twitter the same day. He mocked Bloomberg as "Mini Mike", claimed he had wasted close to $2 billion on his own campaign and pointed to Elizabeth Warren's attack on him during a February primary debate in Las Vegas, a night widely seen as the low point of Bloomberg's run. The tweet ended by telling him to "Save NYC instead."
I thought Mini Mike was through with Democrat politics after spending almost 2 Billion Dollars, and then giving the worst and most inept Debate Performance in the history of Presidential Politics. Pocahontas ended his political career on first question, OVER! Save NYC instead. https://t.co/WgbVvEUt2N
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2020
The $2 billion in the tweet is an exaggeration; most reporting put Bloomberg's primary spending at around $1 billion, which was still a record for a self-funded candidate. Republicans in Florida said they were not worried. They pointed to their wins in the 2018 midterms, a strong field operation and millions of dollars already invested in outreach to Latino voters. The AP also reported that Republicans had more future TV advertising booked in the state than Democrats at that point, by about $8 million.
What happened on election day
The result showed the limits of what money alone can buy. Trump won Florida with 51.2% of the vote to Biden's 47.9%, a margin of 371,686 votes. Turnout was high, at about 77% of registered voters, and pre-election polls, which had shown Biden narrowly ahead, missed the outcome by several points.
The biggest swing came in Miami-Dade County. Biden still won it, but only by about 7 points, compared with Hillary Clinton's 29-point margin there in 2016. Trump made large gains among Hispanic voters, winning roughly 56% of Cuban American voters and around two-thirds of the vote in the city of Hialeah. Biden did flip three counties that Trump had carried before, Duval, Pinellas and Seminole, but not nearly enough to offset the losses in South Florida.
Nationally the picture was different. Biden won the popular vote by more than seven million votes and took the Electoral College 306 to 232 by winning Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Florida, the state Bloomberg had singled out, turned out not to be needed.
Popular vote, Electoral College and big money
The 2020 race was fought under the shadow of 2016, when Clinton won nearly three million more votes nationwide yet lost the Electoral College. Between 1992 and 2020 Republican candidates won the national popular vote only once, in 2004, yet they won the presidency three times: in 2000, 2004 and 2016. That gap is why campaigns pour resources into a handful of swing states rather than into the country as a whole, and why Florida drew so much attention.
Bloomberg's own record also offers a lesson about spending. His billion-dollar primary bid produced a single win, in American Samoa, before he withdrew after Super Tuesday. Political scientists have long argued that paid advertising has small, short-lived effects, especially in a presidential race where voters already know both candidates well. Florida in 2020 fits that pattern: heavy spending on one side did not stop the state from moving the other way.
Key takeaways
- Bloomberg pledged at least $100 million for Florida in September 2020, mostly for ads; it was outside spending, not a direct campaign donation.
- Florida had 29 electoral votes in 2020, tied with New York for third place.
- Trump won Florida by about 3.4 points, helped by big gains among Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade.
- Biden won the presidency without Florida, through Arizona, Georgia and the Rust Belt states.
Sources: Associated Press via News4JAX, 13 September 2020: Bloomberg to spend at least $100M to help Biden in Florida; Wikipedia: 2020 United States presidential election in Florida; tweet embedded from Donald J. Trump's Twitter account.
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