Miami was supposed to be Joe Bidens launchpad to victory in Florida: the place where he could rack up huge margins in Democrat-friendly territory that would allow him to blunt President Donald Trumps strength in the rest of the state. But almost as soon as votes began to roll in Tuesday night, it was clear Biden had a disaster on his hands. He was ahead of Trump in Miami-Dade County, but running behind every Democratic presidential candidate since 2004.

In the end, Biden won Miami-Dade by roughly 7 percentage points and about 85,000 votes, far short of the 24- and 29-point wins Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton achieved in the most populous of Floridas 67 counties during the previous two election cycles. Biden, whose Miami margins also trailed those of the Democrats who lost races for governor and U.S. Senate in 2018, ultimately lost Florida by 3.5 points and nearly 400,000 votes, a veritable blowout by the standards of the tightly contested Sunshine State.

The struggles in south Florida seemingly point to one of the biggest apparent shortcomings of Bidens campaign and Democrats approach to 2020 overall: While Biden appears to have come close to matching typical Democratic margins among Latino voters nationwide, he lost significant ground among specific Hispanic communities in key battleground areas, including Miami, where Cuban Americans and other Latino voters appear to have broken more heavily for Trump and the GOP than expected.

That is not what cost Biden Florida the real under-performers were white voters, said Andrea Mercado, who leads New Florida Majority, a progressive grassroots group that focuses on engaging and turning out Black and Latino Floridians. (Had white support for Biden matched its polling levels, hed have won the state .) And Florida now seems unlikely to cost Biden the presidency.

But it proved devastating for other Democrats, including Rep. Donna Shalala, a well-known name nationally and in South Florida who unexpectedly lost her congressional seat. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, another Democrat, also lost.

A party that already had numerous questions to answer about its future amid a shifting electorate now may have to face a novel inquiry ahead of a 2022 election cycle that will include gubernatorial and Senate races against Republican incumbents: What the hell, exactly, happened in Miami?