VS. THE PARTY THAT WANTS TO LEAVE THEM BEHIND:

Miami-Dade County has been a vote-production machine for the Democratic Party in Florida.

The biggest county in the nation's biggest swing state, it supplied President Barack Obama with a lead of more than 200,000 votes in 2012, an important boost in a state he carried by fewer than 75,000.

To blunt the Democrats' edge, Republicans need to attract more of the county's many Hispanic voters, such as 36-year-old Diego Vásquez. But GOP nominee Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric and shifts within the Latino electorate are making that task more difficult. The results from the Nov. 8 election will indicate how much more difficult.

Mr. Vásquez is a registered Republican, but he twice voted for Mr. Obama. Mr. Trump's incendiary remarks about immigrants threaten to cement his unhappiness with the GOP.

"Immigrants don't come here to destroy," Mr. Vásquez said. "We come here to struggle, to get ahead."

Mr. Vásquez, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, is a testament to the changing face of the electorate in Miami-Dade, where 67% of residents are Hispanic. Once dominated by conservative Cuban-Americans, the Hispanic community has turned more Democratic as young voters of Cuban heritage come of age and new waves of immigrants arrive.

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