By Steve Gorman

Dec 9 (Reuters) - Democrats, flush from a flurry of election victories last month, are favored to win the mayor's race in Miami for the first time in nearly 30 years, with Tuesday's runoff vote closely watched as a test of voter mood in President Donald Trump's stronghold of Florida.

Eileen Higgins, 61, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner, easily led a crowded field of candidates in last month's race with 36% of the vote.

That was short of the majority needed to win outright but well ahead of Republican Emilio Gonzalez, a former Miami city manager and retired U.S. Army colonel, who garnered 20%. Another Democrat, Ken Russell, a former city commissioner, finished in third place with 18%.

A victory for Higgins would be the first Democratic win since 1997, when Xavier Suarez, father of the outgoing incumbent mayor, Francis Suarez, a Republican, was last elected.

It would also make her the first woman and first non-Hispanic candidate elected mayor of Hispanic-majority Miami, a city of roughly 487,000 people that is part of the larger Miami-Dade metropolitan area.

Miami results in November suggested that support for Trump has softened in Miami-Dade County, where many historically left-leaning Hispanic voters moved to Trump's camp last year - as they did nationally - helping him amass 55% of Miami-Dade's vote in the 2024 presidential race, according to the Miami Herald.

Neither Higgins nor Gonzalez started out running an overtly partisan campaign, but the result is likely to serve as a year-end barometer of voter sentiment ahead of the 2026 congressional midterm elections.

Their contest took on greater national overtones in the aftermath of Democrats' decisive triumphs in a slew of off-year elections last month, including the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, New York City's mayoral election and a redistricting referendum in California.

Then Trump weighed in on November 17 to publicly endorse Gonzalez on Truth Social, urging Miami voters: "GET OUT AND VOTE FOR EMILIO - HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!"

"He's nationalized it, he's essentially made it a referendum on him in his own backyard, with his own party, with a constituency that he was laying claim to as the new part of the MAGA coalition," political consultant Mike Madrid told the Herald following Trump's endorsement of Gonzalez.

Madrid tracks Latino voting trends and also co-founded the Republican anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

The Democratic National Committee has since thrown its support behind Higgins, as have former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)