Monday, September 21, 2020 at 4:05PM Last week, I joined David Plouffe and Steve Schmidt's podcast "Battleground" to talk Florida with fellow Florida Man Rick Wilson.
You can check out the episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/florida-the-checkmate-state/id1529896611?i=1000491956052
Monday, September 14, 2020 at 1:37AM Pull up a chair friends, and it is time for a little chat about your favorite state – the place that is, as Congressman Charlie Crist often remarks, the prettiest state with the prettiest name. That of course is La Florida.
So, what is it?
Almost 22 million residents -- and of the most diverse places anywhere.
World’s 17th largest economy - home to the wealthiest zipcode in America, and several of the poorest.
10 media markets - including 3 of the top 18 in America.
Florida Man. Florida Woman. Florida Man’s pet alligator. Florida Man taking pet alligator into a gas station to buy beer.
10 counties with a population larger than Wyoming.
Deer eating pythons in the Everglades. Herpes monkeys. Brain eating amoeba.
Frozen iguanas injuring people as they fall from trees.
7 statewide elections since 2010 that were decided by less than 1.2%.
Over 51 million votes cast for President since 1992. Less than 20,000 separate Republicans and Democrats.
Florida.
The thing to remember about Florida – we aren’t really a state. Most Americans live in a place where community or state at some level equals common experience. We are nearly 22 million people – most whose lives did not begin here – and a full 20% whose lives didn’t even begin in the United States of America – tethered together by a boundary and a dream – a dream made possible thanks to air conditioning, mosquito control, air travel, and interstate highways. While that dream may be different for each individual person, it is almost always a dream that carries people here.
As I said in a piece I wrote last year about Florida Man, we are a frontier – a frontier that continues to draw people here, in search of better weather, jobs, and in the case of many immigrants, the start of an American Dream. In many ways, as I often say when I give speeches about Florida: we are the modern-day Ellis Island of a nation whose more recent immigrant growth orients more south than east.
1924 was the last time Republicans went to the White House without winning Florida. Since that time, the population of the United States has nearly tripled, but the population of Florida has grown by nearly 19x. And every one of those migrants has brought an experience – an experience from somewhere other than here – but it is the collection of those experiences that explains this place, that make Florida well, Florida.
This piece is the 2020 version of a piece I wrote in 2016: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about Florida but were afraid to ask. It is too long, but in the same breath, when I finally hit publish, I will spend the next week thinking of all the things I forgot to say. Also, some of this will be a little repetitive from the 2016 version, because for as much as Florida changes, we are a fairly stable state – at least politically.
I used to think and say that Florida was a microcosm, I have learned this isn’t accurate. Rather, we are reflective of the politics and the culture of the places where people come from. The goal of this is to peel back a little of the onion to give some context to the places you will hear a lot about over the next 60 days as America, and Florida, choose a President.
One note – over time, I have come to think about Florida in terms of media markets, so my regional breaks are inclusive of entire media markets. Truthfully, you can slice this place up a lot of different ways. For example, one can argue people who live on the coastal side of the interstates have more in common with each other than they do people who live inland of the interstates – even when those people live in the same county. In my own perfect world, I’d break the state up lots of different ways, because I don’t think the media markets do a good job. That being said, since campaigns think about elections – or at least paid media through this lens, so will this piece. So, this breaks Florida up into semi-autonomous commonwealths, connected by interstate highways, and tied together by a border – and not much else.
Pull up a beach chair, and let’s go.
THE WAFFLE HOUSE CORRIDOR
There is an old saying in Florida that in order to go south, you go north, and in many ways, the axiom holds true today.
For the sake of this piece, we will define North Florida has the media markets along I-10: Pensacola, Panama City, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, with the addition of Gainesville – which while not touching I-10, is definitely regionally more North Florida than anything else. The region makes up between 18-19% of the statewide vote, and in 2020, will have roughly the same number of votes as Kentucky. It is also demographically more consistent than the rest of Florida – about 72% white among registered voters, and 17% Black, and unlike other areas, neither number has changed much in the last eight years.
It is also worth nothing that I-10 connects two of the communities: Pensacola and Jacksonville, both home to some of the highest Waffle House concentrations per capita. God's country that is.
If you were to drive from west to east, it wouldn’t look too different. The Pensacola area has a strong military presence – and is safely Republican. This is Matt Gaetz country, and Republican margin of victory is fairly predictable here – somewhere between 115-130K votes. As you move east, you start getting into the ole “Redneck Riviera” – which today, is a significant stretch of Florida coastline that is upscale vacation-type properties along the coast – often with more in common with similar coastal areas around the state than the very rural areas just to the north from the coast. Panama City, like Pensacola, has a strong military presence – then as you move further east, you get into the “Forgotten Coast” – a long stretch of coastline that stretches around the Big Bend of Florida where much of the coastline lacks a traditional beach. Again, the question isn’t whether Republicans win these counties, but by how much.
Further inland, the region feels very southern. Small towns, with town squares, many still with confederate monuments, and communities that feel quite segregated. Tallahassee is like a lot of southern university/capital cities: more liberal and younger than its surroundings. Tallahassee is also home to three universities, including the largest HBCU in the state (and third largest in the nation): Florida A&M University. The town is also home to the reigning ACC Men’s basketball champions, which also – and this is key for political purposes – is the holder of the #1 men’s basketball recruiting class in 2021. Just north of Tallahassee is Gadsden County, the county with the highest percentage of African American residents in Florida. As you move from west to east, these are the first counties in the state that will go Democratic.
Not much changes as you move east down I-10 through the small towns of Madison, Live Oak (home to the nation’s #1 truck stop, the Busy Bee), Lake City and Macclenny, as the interstate exits lead to north/south rural roads that lead to more southern towns. To the south of here is Gainesville, home to East Florida Seminary. Like Tallahassee, it is younger and more liberal than its surroundings, a somewhat traditional southern college town. Much of this region is agriculture and speed traps, though this is also an area where prisons provide a lot of employment. When people talk about the places prosperity left behind, they are talking about here.
Then we get to Jacksonville, home of America’s favorite NFL franchise, one that like the community itself, has struggled to get respect. Jacksonville itself is the 12th largest city in the nation by population, and itself, is trending a little Democratic. It would not be a surprise to see Biden carry Duval County (pronounced with a long 'u' - sometimes a really long ;u;). The communities around Jacksonville are as a Republican as any place in Florida, and a Trump win will mean running up record margins in places like St. Johns County and Clay County. If you are interested in the region, you can learn more by reading my piece DUUUUUUVAL.
First, there are a lot of misunderstandings about 2016 in Florida (and everywhere), but one of them is Trump won because of overwhelming support in North Florida. This tends to be a common theme for one, unbelievably lazy reason: many pundits forget that roughly 10 counties in Florida are in the Central Time Zone, meaning they report an hour after the polls close in most of the state. Since Florida reports its vote by mail and in-person early returns almost immediately upon polls closing, this leads to an effect where around 8:05 EST, there is a big wave of Republican votes.
But the truth is, Trump didn’t do significantly better than Romney, or even McCain. Trump won North Florida by 20%, besting Romney’s 19% margin. I honestly don’t know how much more room there is to grow for Trump. There are a number of counties where he will earn north of 75% of the vote, but most of these are small. The larger metro areas are more stable – though he could benefit from growth in the wealthier coastal areas. One note about the region: nearly a quarter of all registered Black voters (predominantly African American in this region) live in North Florida, a fact often forgotten by campaigns that focus on outreach in urban communities.
TAMPA and SW Florida
As we continue our tour of Florida, we head southwest to the Tampa and Fort Myers media markets, and while the two markets are different in some respects, they are also more aligned than not – and certainly the Fort Myers DMA is culturally more centered with residents from Tampa than they are with their fellow Floridians on the east coast (many pollsters will lump Fort Myers into ‘south florida’). Combined, these two media markets will likely have more votes than either Minnesota, or Wisconsin – two critical swing states this cycle.
This region is massive – the northern most county, Citrus County, isn’t touched by I-75, but as you as drive south, you essentially entire the Tampa media market right around the Big Daddy Don Gartlis Drag Racing Museum – and for the record, I am not making a cultural reference here to make fun of people who like drag racing – I grew up loving drag racing. From there, you can drive 240 miles south until I-75 hangs a left into The Everglades – and from there, you can still drive 45 minutes south on local roads until you run out of land. In total, 30% of the state lives here, and while it is the region of the state with the largest share of white voters, the percentage of non-white voters has grown from 21% to 26% since 2012.
If there is a defining feature of the area, it is the most ‘midwestern’ of all the regions, in part because people who moved here tended to move from along the I-75 corridor. When I was growing up just south of Chicago, it seemed like every other person had a grandmother or aunt who lived in Tarpon Springs, or Sarasota, or Port Charlotte – and in fact when my family first looked at moving south, it was the west coast of Florida that seemed like the obvious choice. If you need to see it for yourself, go to a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game when they play the Bears, or when the Rays play someone like the Brewers or Detroit Tigers – you won’t always know the home team.
Because of this more midwestern orientation, the region tends to have more swing vote – particularly in the Tampa market itself. In fact, if you look at the similarities between Bush 04 and Trump 16, both cruised in the Tampa market, while Obama actually won the Tampa media market in 08 and kept it respectable in 12. Had Clinton maintained Obama’s 2012 margins in Tampa, she would have won Florida – but the good news for Democrats – the market did swing heavily towards Democrats in 2008 from Bush, showing nothing is permanent here.
In fact, it isn’t ridiculous to think that the three Tampa DMA counties north of the City of Tampa: Citrus, Hernando, and Pasco, played as big of a role as any in Trump winning Florida. Home to only 4.4% of the statewide vote, only 18% of the market’s vote, and only 14% of the region – these three counties gave Trump a 73,327 vote larger margin than they did Romney over Obama. To put in perspective, Obama won Florida by 74,309, so had these counties performed for Romney like they did for Trump, Florida would have essentially been a tie.
What do all three counties have in common? They are older, whiter, and have a higher percentage of non-college educated residents than the state – the demographics that really shifted away from Democrats in 2016.
As you move south, we run into the “urban core” of Tampa – Hillsborough, with Pinellas to the west, and Polk to the east. I add Polk in here, because even though it is still rural in many respects, the population corridor from Tampa well into Polk County is now continuous – and before long, there will be no rural lands, at least along Interstate 4, between Tampa and Orlando. Tampa itself is a dynamic city, and the county with a population that is younger, more diverse, and more likely to be college-educated than the state or region, has trended from being a swing county to becoming part of the Democratic base. Just in eight years, the number of Hispanic registered voters has increased by nearly 60,000 – meaning Hispanics are roughly 2 out of every 5 new voters signing up in the county. Hillsborough is also home to Big Cat Rescue run by Carole Baskin, and she and I have 17 mutual friends on Facebook – a fact that has no relevance to anything, other than I am fairly certain this burnishes my Florida Man credentials.
To the east – Imperial Polk County is a place bridging old and new Florida, the county is growing – and changing, due to a rapidly growing Puerto Rican population. Nearly 50% of new registrants since 2012 are Hispanic, a trend that should help Democrats, but is balanced out by Republican gains among non-college educated whites – and this is a place where Trump significantly improved over Romney or McCain – though I would expect Biden to perform better. To the west, Pinellas County – one of the rare swing counties – It has gone Gore -> Bush -> Obama -> Obama -> Trump, is unique in that, at 50.5 years of age, it has the oldest median age of the seven largest counties in Florida – and among those seven counties, is also has the largest share of white voters. In other words, if Joe Biden improves on Hillary Clinton’s standing with seniors – it will show up here.
Finally moving south along the coast, we get to the area known as Manasota. Manatee County, directly south of Hillsborough is the more Republican doctrinaire of the two counties, while Sarasota shows can bounce around a bit – going from a Bush blowout in 2004 to a near Obama win in 08 (I am not ever getting over that one), back to Trump by 11 in 2016. Both are older than the state’s median age, wealthier (in terms of Sarasota, much wealthier), and in the upper tier in terms of education. For me, this will be one of the more interesting areas to watch – not because Biden is likely to win here – but a Biden win will need to cut the margins in an area like this, and a Trump win will need to come close to replicating his 2016 margins.
Further south into the Fort Myers media market, we first get to Charlotte County, which demographically, economically, and educationally looks more like the counties north of Tampa than it does the coastal counties surrounding it, and as such it saw a similar significant shift towards Trump in 2016. Beyond it lie Lee County, and Collier County – two counties that account for 5.2% of the statewide vote, but in 2016, gave Trump a 110K vote margin. In fact, no county gave Trump a larger margin that Lee – though one note – while Trump significantly improved over Romney in Lee – he actually received a smaller share of the vote than Romney in Collier, likely due to its higher percentage of college educated voters.
So, what does all this mean? Are you still awake? Across this region, Trump carried it by 11.7% - 334K votes – some 190k votes more than Romney did. A Biden win will look a lot more like Obama 2012 across the region, which won’t be easy, but is doable. If Trump repeats his 2016 performance here, it is probably game over.
ORLANDO
Now we scoot up I-4 to the Orlando media market. I’ve written extensively about Orlando, here, here and here, so if you really want to dive into nerdville, check those pieces out.
Orlando is the fastest growing media market in Florida – comprising about 21% of the statewide vote. There is almost no question this market will have more than 2 million voters this cycle – roughly same number of voters as Louisiana, or Oregon. The region is also diversifying, with the share of registered voters from communities of color growing from 31% to 36% in just eight years – with a significant majority of that growth coming from Puerto Rican voters (more on this later)
The Orlando media market is fascinating, in that if you compare how Gore/Bush played out compared to Clinton/Trump, you will see the Republican margin of victory was nearly the same both times – roughly 3% - but their win paths look completely different. If you think of the market as two separate ecosystems – one being urban Orlando, specifically Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties – and the other as a six county (Sumter, Marion, Lake, Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard) exurban halfmoon to the north and east of Orlando – in 2000, Bush won the urban counties by about 9K votes, and the exurban counties by 28K. Fast forward to 2020 – Hillary Clinton won the urban counties by 166K votes – but Trump won the exurban counties by 223K votes.
For sake of this piece, we will think about the markets in three buckets: the three counties that make up the “Metro Villages” region; the coastal counties of Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard; and the urban core of Orlando as defined above. The national media tends to focus on one thing: Puerto Rican growth in Orlando, while in fact, the entire region is dynamic – with various counterforces driving the area’s politics.
The northern part of the district often all gets lumped together as The Villages, and while “America’s friendliest neighborhood” does impact all three counties, the region is far more than that. Marion County is old Florida horse country, and many of the world’s top thoroughbreds trained at some point in the Ocala area. Lake County is one of Florida’s most beautiful areas – home unsurprisingly to more than 1,000 lakes and has one of America’s busiest sea plane ports. Lake County is also where adventure seekers flock when they want to conquer Mt. Dora. Sumter County is more rural but is seeing rapid population growth thanks to The Villages.
The area is older – all three counties are in the upper tier of median age for the state – with the median age in Sumter alone pegged at 65 – the highest in the state. The area is growing – not as much as some would think with The Villages – but what it is doing is getting more Republican. In 2008, McCain won these three counties by about 52K votes, with Trump increasing that margin to 115K in just eight years, a gain of 63K votes. Compare this to the entire gain Democrats saw in urban Orlando – a gain in the margin of about 66K votes for Clinton compared to Obama 08 – yet the total number of voters in these three counties is less than half of the total number of voters in urban Orlando. This is an area for Republicans that punches above its weight.
Moving to the east, we take a look at the three coastal counties in the market: Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard (from north to south). Honestly, there is probably no region that more clearly shows the struggles Democrats have had over the last decade than this three-county region. In 2008, McCain won these three counties by about 15,000 votes – with Obama actually winning two of the three counties. Four years later, the GOP advantage rose to roughly 42,000 – and four after, to almost 109,000 – with Clinton not even being competitive in the two counties Obama won just eight years earlier. It was the Volusia result, a county that Obama carried by 14,000 votes in 08 – that flipped to a Trump +34,000 vote margin just eight years later that led me to text my friend Paul Begala on Election Night with my view that the whole thing was probably done.
This is basically a classic white-working class region of the state. Flagler’s fast growth in the 90’s was driven by affordable retirement housing that generally drew retired union workers from the northeast and mid-Atlantic states – and at least one famous person: Shirley Chisholm, who I was blessed to know a bit during her retired years in Palm Coast (she even yelled at me once – justifiably). But over time, the housing boom busted, the economy stalled, and the dream of prosperity moved elsewhere. Volusia was once one of the state’s leading manufacturing areas – as well as home to Daytona International Speedway, a place I call home twice a year. Brevard further south is home to a bunch of legit rocket scientists – and a whole bunch of others whose lives were upended as America made the switch from a government-only space program to the new commercial-space model.
All three counties are whiter than the state median – have a lower percentage of residents with a college income – and have a lower median income than the state. If Joe Biden can regain a foothold with these types of voters in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, you will see the results here in Florida.
Finally, the urban core of Orlando: Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County. In 2004, George Bush carried these two of these counties, and this little region overall. By 2016, the world had changed here. In just eight years, the number of Hispanic voters has risen from 240,000 to over 365,000 – and the share of the electorate that is white has dropped from 55% to 48%. It is also younger than the rest of the Orlando market – whereas the other six counties all have a median age of 47 or higher, each of the three urban Orlando markets have a median age of 40 or younger. Two of the three: Orange and Seminole are towards the top of the state rankings for educational attainment – and both are wealthier in terms of median income. What used to be Mosquito County (literally – and for a reason), is now a thriving metropolis, with an economy that would rival the nation of Kuwait. Hillary Clinton won 2 of the three counties: Orange and Osceola – and the three counties combined by 166K votes. A Joe Biden win will probably mean him winning all three – and even building on that Clinton margin.
Before we go on, I would like to take a point of personal privledge. Please stop asking about and referring to Puerto Rican voters as if they just all moved here after Hurricane Maria. This storyline from the political media is just wrong. Yes, some voters moved here after Maria, but not nearly as many as most predicted (as I predicted would be the case). That being said, the politics of Central Florida is what it is today because of the massive Puerto Rican growth over the last twenty years -- of which the Maria growth is just a fraction. OK- had to get that off my chest. Back to the blog.
Longtime readers have heard me refer to the state as a self-balancing scale – and no place shows this more than Orlando. Donald Trump winning Florida will mean he is able to replicate his success with older voters, and non-college whites – thus matching or even exceeding his 3% win in the Orlando market. A Biden win would mean him making gains with older voters, and non-college educated whites – as well as maximizing his votes with communities of color and suburban white women (note Seminole County). If he does this, there is a world where he returns the entire market back to the Democratic column – and if he does that, honestly, he will probably be the next President.
WEST PALM BEACH
The next two sections won’t be as long – I do promise. The regions are smaller geographically, and well, my carpal tunnel is coming back. We can do this people – just hang in there.
In 2012, Jason Alexander (George on Seinfeld) drove to Boca Raton, FL to do a series of campaign appearances for Barack Obama in retirement communities. It was literally George going to Del Boca Vista, Phase II to see his parents. That whole bit on Seinfeld demonstrates the connective tissue between Palm Beach County and communities in the Northeast. Retiring to Boca or Delray was the dream – it was where guys like George would travel to see their grandparents – and the politics of those communities, places like Century Village or King’s Point, drove the politics of much of the area. They were almost like their own New York boroughs – with their own political infrastructure. While the west side of the state orients towards the Midwest, this side of the state orients up the I-95 corridor.
But like most of this region – that is slowly changing. Home to just over 10% of the statewide vote, yes the Palm Beach media market is still home to massive communities for retirees, but in a lot of the area, retirees are being replaced by younger families from communities of color – often second and third generation immigrant families who are moving north from Miami-Dade. Palm Beach County alone has seen its share of voters from communities of color increase by 7% in just eight years. St. Lucie County further north has seen the same cohort grow in share by 5%.
One note on the region – the boundaries and media markets aren’t necessarily the best cultural divisions. One can argue that Broward County, just to the south – and in the Miami media market, has big chunks that are more “Palm Beach County” in orientation than Miami in orientation. The great “Condo Commandos” of the 90s, folks like “Trinchi" Trinchitella, and Diane Glasser were residents of Broward – when much of Broward felt like Palm Beach.
We actually split the state up this way in the Obama years – but for purposes of ease, this exercise breaks them up into their respective markets. It is also fair to say, as we will get to next – Broward isn’t what it used to be either.
Palm Beach County itself is about 68% of the registered voters in the market, and roughly the same share of Presidential cycle voters. The four other counties: Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie, are located north of Palm Beach County, each have their own character and politics. Every county in the market is coastal, except for one: Okeechobee.
If you remember earlier, I made a point about how often times the inland part of the state has more in common with itself than coastal communities nearby – well Okeechobee fits this bill. Okeechobee is part of the “Florida Heartland” that stretches from Lake Okeechobee to the counties making up the I-4 corridor. This is agriculture country – and when it comes to Okeechobee, it is specifically cattle country. Florida is the 10th largest cattle producer in the nation – and Okeechobee is #1 in Florida. But just like the rural counties to the north, Okeechobee lags in most economic and educational indicators, and just like similar counties to the north, Trump did significantly better than Romney – taking Romney’s 20-point win in 2012 and extending it to 40 points.
Moving to the east – Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, and Palm Beach – the four coastal counties from north to south – were all part of Florida’s original Mosquito County. Yes, we had a county named Mosquito. The decision to disband the territorial county in 1844 was probably as disappointing in the rearview mirror as the decision to change the original state flag, which flew for only one day, when Florida became a state in 1845. Google it. Trust me, it is amazing.
Politically, Indian River and Martin are very similar, with the swing county of St. Lucie sandwiched in between. St. Lucie voted Obama -> Obama -> Trump, just like Pinellas County in the Tampa media market. In case of both Indian River and Martin, both gave Trump a margin over 20 points. The major difference between the three: St. Lucie has a substantially more diverse electorate, only 65% white, compared to 84 and 88% respectively for Indian River and Martin Counties. St. Lucie is the kind of place Biden will need to win to win Florida.
One interesting note on Martin County – longtime drivers of interstates in Florida will remember that the last piece of I-95 to be completed in Florida was through Martin County. Back in the day, drivers would get off at Fort Pierce in St. Lucie and take the Florida Turnpike down to Palm Beach Gardens, in large part because Martin County residents didn’t want the growth that would come with the interstate. As a result, I-95 veers far from the coast in Martin County, before re-aligning with the Florida Turnpike, where, in the most Florida way ever, the two roads literally run next to each other for 17 miles. To this day, I suspect that decision is one main reason why the sprawl of South Florida, ranking the length of the three main SE Florida counties, essentially stops at the Martin County line.
Moving south to the anchor of the market: Palm Beach County. Most people think of Palm Beach County through one of two lenses: Palm Beach itself, or that townhouse where your grandmother retired in a town whose name you can’t remember, unless it is Boca, in which case, Boca. But Palm Beach County is far more than this: for one, it is the largest county by area in the state, and it is #1 in Florida for agricultural revenue (plot twist: Miami-Dade is #2. Much of this is sugarcane, though the county has a very diverse agriculture economy. Palm Beach is also home to the one place you can drive your car next to big game animals: Lion Country Safari, which is actually a legitimately cool place to visit.
Palm Beach County is also exceptionally diverse. Almost 46% of county residents come from communities of color, and some 25% of the county is foreign born. In terms of migration into the county, the largest populations are coming from the Caribbean, hence you will find Creole spoken in the county, in addition to both English and Spanish. And while there is a large retired population here, of the four coastal counties in this market, Palm Beach has the lowest percentage of its population over 65.
The politics of the county are generally Democratic, though there are Republican pockets. Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012 carried the county by nearly identical vote margins: roughly 107K votes – though in terms of vote share, that dropped a 17% Obama margin to 15.5% for Secretary Clinton. This combined with Trump’s stronger performance in the northern four counties dropped President Obama’s 8.5% margin in 2012 to just over 5% for Secretary Clinton in 2016.
This area will be an absolute battleground. Trump will try to continue to make gains in the market, while Vice President Biden will have an opportunity to return to the Obama margins by increasing his vote share among seniors, as well the growing population within communities of color. The county did look closer to the Obama margins for the Democratic statewide candidates in 2018.
MIAMI-FORT LAUDERDALE
The final chapter of this saga takes us to the Miami media market – home of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe County. Home to about 25% of the state’s population – but due to the large number of residents without citizenship, just under 20% of the statewide vote, this is absolutely the most diverse corner of the state. Over 70% of registered voters here come from communities of color, and within this population, the diversity is on par with the most cosmopolitan areas anywhere in the world. It is also home to some of the most hair-raising traffic in the world – as my friend and noted Florida pollster Tom Eldon likes to say: “Miami must be the most religious place on Earth, since everyone drives like they are at complete peace with God.”
This is the Democratic base of the state. In the counties that Secretary Clinton win in 2016, she carried a total margin of roughly 971,000 votes – nearly 60% of that margin came from the two counties of Broward and Miami-Dade. The battle here is simple: Democrats want to run up the margin, and Republicans want to find ways to keep it down.
Before we jump into the two big counties, let’s take a second and mention the southernmost county in the state: Monroe County. Monroe County is home to the Florida Keys, part of which is “technically” a foreign nation occupied by American citizens. The good people of Key West seceded from the union in 1982, and never formally returned. Monroe is one of the highest income counties in the state, where more than 20% of the population makes its income from the entertainment industry. The county is traditionally pretty competitive, though it has trended more Republican over the last cycle or two. Trump won the county by about 3K votes in 2016.
Broward County is the northernmost county in the market. Broward is home to just under 2 million residents, of which nearly 1/3 are foreign born -- and it is rapidly diversifying. The county is the 17th largest by population in the nation – and is largely built out, with some communities bumping right up against The Everglades. There are 31 municipalities inside Broward, and most of them have their own unique character, including the Venice of America, Fort Lauderdale. While this is a massive generalization – the northern part of Broward has more in common with Palm Beach County, and the southern part of Broward kind of morphs into Dade County (and yes all of you about to tweet at me, I know there are exceptions to this rule).
As a result of the diversifying population, among registered voters, in just 8 years, the share of the white vote has dropped from 52.3% to 42.8%. The fastest growing segment of the voter pool are Hispanics, whose share of registered voters has increased by over 5%. While in most places, Black voters – which in Broward are both African American and Caribbean voters, are seeing their share of the vote remain fairly consistent – here these communities are growing as a share of the vote. If Joe Biden wins, he will almost certainly be the first candidate to win Broward with a margin north of 300,000 votes.
Just south of Broward is Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade is quite possibly the single most diverse city in the world, with roughly 85% of the population comprised of residents who are considered ethnic minorities in the United States, and roughly half the population is foreign born. Hispanics make up the largest segment of the population – and within Hispanics, Cubans are the dominant group, though there are meaningful and growing populations from nations all over Latin America, most notably Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.
The diversity extends into the Black community – home to large populations from the Bahamas, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica. Roughly 125,000 people in Dade speak Creole at home. That being said, the share of the Black vote as a percentage of all registered voters in Dade is dropping, though the share of voters who register as either “other” or “mixed” has increased, so it could be a situation of voters reclassifying themselves. Tracking the Caribbean Black population can be difficult, since there is no specific category on either voter registration forms or census figures. That being said, there is some evidence that the drop in Black participation in 2016 in comparison to 2012 was as a result of lower turnout among Caribbean voters – and for Democrats this cycle, staying focused on engaging this growing segment of the population is important.
A lot has been written of late about Dade County, the Trump and Biden support among Hispanics, and the margin needed for Biden to win. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Dade County by 16 points. Four years later, we won it by 24 points, and four years after that, Secretary Clinton won it by 29 points. Two polls last week showed Biden with a 17 and an 18-point lead, with both showing a fairly robust undecided.
The Clinton margins of 2016 are likely not replicable. First, the Clinton’s have 30 years of relationship building in Miami, as President Clinton was one of the first Democrats to actively campaign for the Cuban vote. Secondly, Republicans and Trump have had four years of outreach work. Does Joe Biden have to win the same share of the vote in Dade? Today, the answer to that is no – largely due to the fact that while Biden might not win Dade by the same margin as Clinton, thanks to Biden’s stronger support levels among white seniors and white suburban votes, Trump is not likely to win many of his counties by the same margin he did four years ago. That being said, if Biden can get to the Obama 2012 levels, he will end up coming close to matching Secretary Clinton’s media market margins, as is likely to win Broward by a larger vote margin. Obama won the overall market by 28 points in 2012, with Clinton carrying it by 31 in 2016. Anywhere north of that 2012 margin is a pretty solid goal – as long as the rest of the state does its job.
WHERE DO WE STAND
I am glad you have read this far. I am also glad I have written this far and not quit. Also, thank you for ignoring the grammar mistakes - I have re-read this several times, but I am sure I missed things. I know Twitter will find them :-)
Florida is going to be close – not because of any particular strengths or weaknesses of either candidate, but just because it is wired this way. If you take all the people who have voted in Presidential elections since 1992, Florida has seen north of 51 million ballots cast, and the difference between the total number of Republican ballots and total number of Democratic ballots is less than 20,000 votes. Yes, you read that right.
The thing that makes Florida close is that all the areas above cancel each other out. Here’s one perspective – if you take the markets that each party tends to win every election – for Democrats that is Miami, Palm Beach, Gainesville, and Tallahassee – and for Republicans, Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers, the 2012 and 2016 races were basically identical, with both parties coming within a few thousands votes in 2016 of their 2012 margins. The entirety in the change in that election was in the I-4 markets – where Democrats did better in urban counties, and Trump did significantly better everywhere else.
The battlelines in 2020 won’t be much different. Trump will continue to try to solidify and grow support in communities with high numbers of non-college whites. Biden will look to cut Republican margins in communities with more seniors, and higher numbers of suburban women. Biden will look to increase Black turnout to something closer to 2012 levels, and both will fight for Hispanics – though their paths in these communities are different.
There is no single key to winning here – and both campaigns have smart, experienced Florida leadership. Getting to 50% here is about assembling the right pieces of the puzzle all across the board.
Lastly, I haven't gotten my head around how to do the daily memos as I have in the past. As much as I enjoy them, my own responsibilities this cycle are different, and time consuming. This doesn’t mean I won’t provide thoughts and analysis (and definitely some memos), just that I don’t know yet if I will have the time to do them daily – or at least in the same form I did in 2016 and 2018, both cycles where I ended up spending the fall months largely in the bullpen. So stay tuned.
Thanks again for reading all the way to the end. Florida is not only the most competitive - it is the most interesting of all the battleground states, thanks to people from all walks of life and all corners of the Earth moving here -- probably including you one day (if you don't already live here). So buckle up for the ride - and whatever you do this cycle, make sure you vote.
And Go Jaguars!
Monday, June 15, 2020 at 4:46PM 
With the Republican National Convention headed to Jacksonville, I figured this was an opportunity to write about my favorite part of Florida.
Also, before we get into it, for my media friends coming to Northeast Florida for the event, it is pronounced DOO-Vall with an emphasis on the “oo.” The longer you hold the “oo” – the better response you will get. Just ask President Obama, who nearly blew the roof off the arena at the University of North Florida by dropping a DUVAL at the start of a speech in 2016.
There is an immense amount of history here, even before Gardner Minshew arrived in 2019. Northeast Florida is Florida’s First Coast. Home to the Timucua people, Ponce De Leon landed here in 1513, somewhere near modern-day St. Augustine, and named the place “La Florida” – or as former Governor Crist rightly calls it, the state with the prettiest name.
Jean Ribault explored what is now called the St. Johns River in 1562 on behalf of the French, finding one of the only two rivers in the world that predominantly flow north. In 1564, the French came back and settled at Fort Caroline, which is near where the St. Johns River empties into the Atlantic. It is noteworthy that here was likely the first Thanksgiving dinner, shared between the French and the local Timucua peoples – and in the most Florida Man way ever – a dinner of alligator.
Pedro Menendez arrived from Spain in 1565, founding St. Augustine in honor of the saint, and creating the oldest continual European settlement in the United States of America. It is important to note that Menendez was not a good human. He immediately had the Lutheran French slaughtered near an inlet - an inlet later named “Matanzas” as the word for slaughter. The Matanzas River runs through downtown St. Augustine.
Also, Fort Mose, just north of modern-day St. Augustine, was the first free-black settlement in the USA and served as the first destination of the earliest Underground Railroad. Nearly 230 years later, Reverend Martin Luther King made St. Augustine the focal point of this 1965 summer – the city’s 400th birthday, moving from home to home at night for his own safety. While I am personally proud of the Rev. King history in St. Augustine, the region remains quite segregated - in virtually every way possible. Much of my own origin story in politics comes from learning this reality as a kid. Sadly this is still a place where the railroad tracks remain both a literal, and figurative barrier for too many African Americans.
The old saying about Florida is the further north you go, the more you are in the south, and when my family moved to the region in 1984, this was absolutely the case. Today, it is more complicated than that. The coast, which even 30 years ago, was very ‘old Florida coastal’ today is a place of significant wealth – with the old homes/shops of beach communities replaced by upscale homes, neighborhoods, and golf courses in fast growing communities like Ponte Vedra Beach. In fact, these days, some areas on the Atlantic side of Interstate 95 bear very little resemblance to the places inland – particularly the further you travel from the urban core.
If you visualize the nine-county region as a wheel cut in half, Jacksonville is the hub – anchored along the ocean, and bisected by the wide St. Johns River. Jacksonville, the largest city in the contiguous United States by area - and the 12th largest by populataion, is both the population center, and the driving military, industrial and financial force of the region – and like the NFL’s Jaguars, the city tends to underperform expectations. That being said, there are a lot of parallels between the team's identity and the city. As my friend and area State Senator Rob Bradley said about the Jaguars playoff run in 2018, "to understand the mindset of #JagNation, you must understand the disrespect to our region, fans and team that we have collectively endured for more than a decade. But we kept grinding." You could say the same thing about the city. One of the area's newer unofficial slogans, Duval Till We Die, is a real a real part of the DNA.
As you move north and south from that hub – along the coast, the region is exceptionally modern and wealthy. The southern part of the hub are the ruby red, growing suburban population centers of Clay and
St. Johns County. Clay is home to a lot of military families, and generally split between rural pockets and the Jacksonville core. St. Johns is home to St. Augustine – my hometown, and the county, which used to be one of the potato growing capitals of America, is transitioning into a bedroom community of Jacksonville. North is Nassau County, which is very wealthy along the coast (Amelia Island), developing along the I-95 corridor, and very rural inland.
However, as you move west into Baker, Bradford, Union, and Columbia counties, the region gets rural quickly - and the modernity that you saw on the coast is replaced by communities you could find anywhere in the rural south, places that in some ways feel lost in time compared to the rest of the state. Prisons are a big part of the economy here. Then furthest south, you reach Putnam County along the St. Johns River, a place that was a shipping and rail hub in the late 19th century - and has arguably been trying to figure out its identity every sense, and like the counties west of Duval, the prosperty that has found Florida over the last fifty years has never made it there.
As mentioned above, the market is a place of extreme contrasts, home to the poorest per-capita income county in Florida, Union County, and one of its wealthiest, St. Johns. Three counties rank in the top 10
for highest teenage birth rates, while two others are among the lowest. Same goes for educational attainment: St. Johns County, where nearly 55% of residents over 25 have some form of a college degree, compared to Bradford, Putnam, and Union counties, where the percentage of adults without a high school degree (over 21% in all three) is higher than the percentage with any type of college degree.
Based on those facts – wealthy suburbs and rural counties, as you can imagine, the place is fairly Republican – though Duval itself is competitive – and Joe Biden could well be the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win the county. The region is growing (though at about the same rate as the state), but unlike other areas of the state, it is remaining demographically steady. As of February, roughly 70% of the region’s registered voters were non-Hispanic White, and about 19% were Black (almost universally African American, unlike South Florida that is home to large Caribbean Black populations). This demographic mix hasn’t changed much since 2012.
The region is a near perfect example of the recategorization of voter registration that occurred in large parts of the south during the Obama years. In 2004, President Bush carried the Jacksonville media market by about 180,000 votes – with Democrats holding a 20,000 or so advantage in voter registration - a throwback to old southern political identifcation. In 2016, President Trump carried the market by about 165,000 votes, with Republicans holding a 110,000 advantage in voter registration. The only thing that changed was the many voters shifted over to the party they had been voting for years.
In 2008, Jacksonville was one of the anchors of our Obama Florida plans. Bush carried Duval by over 61,000 votes in 2004. We saw Duval as a place where we could take away a significant Republican stronghold by engaging a significant population of African American voters who sat out in 2004, plus organize around college students, and suburban white women. Then Senator Obama visited the region three times in 2008 (and several more times as President), and in the end, we largely flipped Duval from a solid shade of red in 2004, to a place where the GOP win margins weren’t overly significant to the math of the state. To further drive this point home: in 2004, the year of the big Bush win, the Bush margin in Duval made up nearly 35% of the total margin that Bush carried the Jacksonville media market. In 2016, Duval was only 3% of Trump’s total – and nearly identical to 2004, margin in the Jacksonville DMA.
Interestingly, in Duval, since 2016, Democrats have increased their advantage in voter registration from just under 20,000 voters to just under 40,000 voters – and with three statewide Democrats winning Duval in 2018, Democrats should be confident that a good night for Joe Biden in Florida will very likely include Duval going well, Blueval.
Beyond Duval, something kind of interesting is happening in St. Johns. In losing Florida, Secretary Clinton cut the margin in St. Johns by 4% compared to President Obama – a trend which continued in 2018 – and while other red counties got redder around Florida, the numbers in Clay didn’t really change much from 12 to 16. In fact, since 2018, Democrats have slightly out-registered Republicans in these two counties – which is interesting only from the fact that combined, the GOP has a 100,000+ advantage over Democrats. Nothing here should be overstated -- these will remain massively Republican counties for the foreseable future, but I suspect if we really dove in, we’d see that the GOP struggles with college-educated white women is blunting their growth in two places that in all other considerations, should be getting more Republican.
But Florida being Florida means one thing is always certain: one political trend is almost always cancelled out by an equal, and opposite political trend -- and in this case, a more competitive Duval is getting cancelled out, in part, by the rural parts of the market. In the six rural counties that make up the Jacksonville DMA, Baker, Bradford, Columbia, Nassau (there is a legit debate about how to categorize Nassau, but it is my blog, so it is here), Putnam, and Union Counties – counties that combined made up 17% of the total Jacksonville DMA vote in 2016 – made up more than 40% of Trump’s regional margin – as he carried one of the counties with a margin over 50%, and two of them with margins over 60%. The only good news for my team there: It is reasonable to argue that in most of these places, he’s not got much room to grow.
So, what does all this mean for 2020? Honestly, absent a bigger shift in the national electorate, there isn’t much happening here that would suggest a result much different than 2012 or 2016. It is hard to see Duval trending back towards the Republicans, just as it is hard to see the rural areas trending back towards the Democrats. The real question as it comes to the outcome is whether Democrats can get over the hump in Duval & continue to stall out GOP growth in St. Johns and Clay – or if Republicans can reverse the Duval trends and get the train going again in St. Johns and Clay.
And if you are going to the region for the convention, take some time to explore the history, make sure to keep your head on a swivel – you never know when Blake Bortles might throw an errant pass your way.
#DTWD
Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 10:24PM On Tuesday, President Trump will be in Orlando to announce his re-election.
Why Orlando?
They understand first and foremost, without Florida, he will be a one-term President. The last Republican to win the White House without Florida was Calvin Coolidge, and well, that was so long ago that Floridians at that time were still at risk of getting malaria. Secondly, they understand winning Florida requires him replicating, at least close to, the record-setting margins he set on the I-4 corridor.
This piece will walk through why this region of the state is vital to Trump winning Florida again, as well as point out some thoughts on how my team can stop that from happening. Further, because it is my blog, it will have an unhealthy amount of data, and you can probably count on a gratuitous Blake Bortles reference or two.
Simply, his Presidency runs through Florida, and as this piece will lay out, his win here runs through the suburban and exurban counties on I-4. Replicate it, as DeSantis and Scott largely did in 2018, and he will win. But if the Dems take away some of those margins, as they did in 2008, and 2012, then Trump’s second term will be denied. Florida. Florida. Florida.
Before we get to far down this journey, let’s take a look at how Trump won Florida, in comparison to President Obama’s two wins.
There are several theories that are pretty common among the beltway crowd.
Theory: Trump won because of the Panhandle
One of the more common talking points about Florida is Trump won because of wild turnout in the Panhandle. For this purpose, let’s define that as the counties in the media markets one can define as the Panhandle – Pensacola, Panama City, and Tallahassee. While it is true that Trump ran up some big vote shares: winning one county by 77%, and another by 67%, the reality is these three markets only make up about 8% of the statewide vote. Overall Trump won these markets by just under 200,000 votes, winning nearly 61% of the vote – and beating Clinton by 26% - but his 61% was basically identical to Romney’s 61% -- who won the region by almost 170,000 votes.
If you expand out the Panhandle to mean all of North Florida – meaning adding Gainesville and Jacksonville to the mix, Trump overall won the market by just over 20% (58.2-38.0%) over Clinton, which equated to a margin of just over 350,000 votes. But again, when compared to Romney, there isn’t much difference: Romney won North Florida by 19.2%, or about 313,000 votes.
The Panhandle is actually very stable politically, and while Trump did improve over Romney, had nothing else changed in Florida, he didn’t make up enough votes here to win.
Theory: Democratic Turnout Was Down
So there is a lot to unpack on this one. First, Democrats lost substantial ground in voter registration between 2008/12 and 2016. The Democratic advantage over Republicans was 660,000 in 2008, falling to about 530K in 2012, to 325K in 2016 – so for one, relative to our advantage over Republicans in the Obama era, there weren’t as many Democrats to turn out. It is hard to say whether that alone would have made the difference, though I feel very confident in saying I believe the Dems would have won the Governor’s race and US Senate race in 2018 if we had the voter registration advantage of the Obama years. I am glad to see the party taking registration seriously this cycle.
It is also true that Clinton didn't replicate the record turnout we saw, particularly with African American voters with Obama. That being said, I don't think counting on record turnout every election is a long-term winning strategy.
Nonetheless, the actual vote numbers would argue that it wasn’t a base vote issue. There are a couple of different ways to look at it.
If you just take the actual base counties, which account for about 43% of the statewide vote (listed from north to south): Leon, Alachua, Orange, Osceola, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade: Hillary Clinton won both a larger share (24% to 21.5%), and by a larger raw vote margin (963K to 779K) than Barack Obama did in 2012.
If you expand it out, and look at from the stand point of markets that Democrats typically win pretty easily (Tallahassee, Gainesville, West Palm and Miami), and compare it to markets Republicans typically carry with ease (Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers), both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their markets by larger shares and larger vote margins than Obama and Romney – but almost identical numbers. Clinton won her markets by 79,000 more votes than Obama – and Trump won his by 76,000 more than Romney. In other words, relative to 2012, the base markets were a push.
The problem with combating the argument that a loss was related to turnout, is until there is 100% turnout, you can always blame that for a loss. While we should always try to turn out more voters, the reality is both Trump and Clinton got win-type vote numbers out of their base markets – and base counties. Had this been all that happened, Clinton would have won.
So let’s get back to why Trump is on the I-4 corridor.
Obama won Florida in 2012 by roughly 74,000 votes, and Trump won it by about 113,000. In other words, there was roughly 187,000 vote change in the margin from Obama to Trump. As stated above, in 8 of the state’s 10 media markets, the Clinton/Trump election was pretty much the Obama/Romney election. Clinton ran the score up in her counties, and Trump jacked up his numbers, particularly in the Fort Myers market, but the final result in these places was almost identical to 2012 -- which leaves us Orlando and Tampa.
In 2012, President Obama lost the two media markets by a combined 56,575 votes – and four years later, Secretary Clinton lost the same two media markets by 247,118 – a total shift of 190K votes.
But what is remarkable is how Trump ran up the score in these markets, given that Secretary Clinton won the urban Orlando counties (Seminole, Orange and Osceola) by almost 70,000 more votes than Obama. In 14 counties within the I-4 markets, Trump set the modern era Republican Presidential percentage margin of victory, and in 15, he set the record for largest raw vote margin of victory – in virtually every case, breaking the numbers set by Bush in 04, in a year when he won by five points. In fact, statewide, Trump’s percentage share margin was better than Bush’s 04 margins in 48 counties, and his raw vote margins were better in 55. If Bush had seen Trump like numbers in those counties, he would have won Florida by 8-9 points.
And that is why Trump is here. The fact that he set records all over the state, and yet only won by a point is a testament to two things: One – the state is structurally very stable, as we can see by just how similar the Obama/Clinton and Romney/Trump numbers are in many places, and Two – the growing diversity of the state, particularly in the urban core, has given the Democrats a higher floor, thus just like the Republicans, the Democratic nominee in Florida probably starts around 47-48%, just by being on the ballot.
There is another parallel to Bush explaining Trump’s Central Florida kickoff – Trump’s margin of victory in the I-4 markets (247k) was pretty close to what Bush achieved (287K) when he won Florida in 2004. But just as many pundits wrote off Florida in 2008, we saw that within these counties, there is a significant amount of movement inside the margins. In 2004, Democrats only won two counties in these two markets, six in 2008, five in 2012, and four in 2016. Yet within that, we saw in the market go from a Bush 287K vote win in 04, to an Obama 49K vote margin in 08, to a Romney 57K vote margin, back to Trump’s nearly 250K vote margin in 2016.
Here are a few examples of how these margins changed over time:
Pasco (just north of Tampa)
2004: GOP +9.7% (-18,481 votes)
2008: GOP +3.6% (-7,687)
2012: GOP +6.6% (-14,164)
2016: GOP +21.6 (-51,959)
Sarasota:
2004: GOP +8.3% (-16,250)
2008: GOP +0.1% (-211)
2012: GOP +7.4% (-15,385)
2016: GOP +11.6 (-26,568)
Volusia (Daytona)
2004: Dem +1.5% (+3,595)
2008: Dem +5.7% (+13,857)
2012: GOP +1.2% (-2,742)
2016: GOP 13.0% (-33,916)
And here’s one little secret – a lot of the movement in those counties come from the same voters who moved around between Obama and Trump in the Midwest, since a lot of the migration into the I-4 counties comes from that part of the US mainland.
And one other little note: Trump’s win in Florida coincided with the Bortles reign as QB of the Jaguars. Bortles is no longer in Florida. Just keep that in mind.
If Trump’s margin here gets cut in half, I suspect the Democrats will win Florida, and his team knows it -- and before you suggest it can't be done, I would simply point to how Barack Obama reversed the Bush gains in 2004 in these same counties in 2008.
In fact, I'll go one step further -- I suspect the Trump polling which got released over the weekend, the polling showing Joe Biden in a strong position in Florida, pointed very specifically to these two media markets as a place of weakness - thus why Orlando is getting visit tomorrow.
Thursday, June 13, 2019 at 11:12AM I’ve been meaning to write a Florida Man piece for some time, and while I have a longer piece I am still noodling with, a piece published last week by Bob Norman in the Columbia Journalism Review spurred me on. You should go read it now.
Seriously, it is far better than this. Again, the link is here: https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/florida-man-news.php.
I tend to joke about being a Florida Man, but I wear the label as a signal of my own state pride. I love the place I call home, for all its many warts and shortcomings. For many, Florida has become a symbol of a dream – for Americans living north of us, that dream is often to live or retire here, in the paradise we call home. For those who come here from the Caribbean or Latin America, Florida in many ways is the New York of the late 19th and early 20th century – the point of entry to begin their own American Dream.
This is such an interesting place, in part, because we aren’t really a place in the same sense as most states. Name a state, and for most, a brand comes to mind. Not so much with Florida. We are geographic distinction, 21 million people bound together by a boundary, sharing very little when it comes to common experience, or culture.
It is why Florida is often considered to be 5 or 6 different states – not just because the state is big both geographically, and in terms of raw population, but those population centers themselves tend to somewhat different. The state isn’t so much a microcosm of America, as it is a state that reflects the places where people come from, and in the sum, we are just a collection of all those experiences.
After the 2018 election recounts, I said to the New York Times: “When people make fun of Florida, I kind of push back. It’s an interesting, bizarre, quirky, whatever-you-want-to-call-it place, but so is America. And we just reflect that in a more magnified way.” This is why, when my friends from outside the state use the term Florida Man as a pejorative, I remind them, stealing the words of Christine O’Donnell, that Florida is not a witch, we are nothing that it seems, America, we are in fact, you.
So back to that thing about state identity, for good or bad, Florida Man is one of those things people think about when they think about Florida, these often ridiculous moments that seemingly only happen here (truth is, they happen everywhere, but Florida’s broad public records laws tend to make them easier to find).
Many of these stories can be chalked up to a few things, one of which is just the sheer numbers game of a state of 21 million people – for example, put enough people in a pot, and you will find someone who thinks it is a good idea to have 7 pet raccoons, or to use his pet gator to reveal the gender of his tenth kid. Also, much of the state is still rural, and in some cases, truly wilderness, so there were always be ‘interesting’ interactions between wildlife, gators, bears, snakes, etc., and people – and sometimes, those interactions impact the narrative the other way. For example, the Florida Everglades is overrun with pythons thanks to some Florida Men who, for some reason, thought owning a python as a pet would be fun, well, until that python grew to 10 feet or more. Other stories are often just the combination of heat and alcohol.
But as Bob Norman points out, there is another, exploitive nature to the Florida Man stories, one that, whether intentionally, or inadvertently, pokes fun at the homeless, mental illness, and substance abuse.
I went through the Leadership Florida program six years ago, and one of the most impactful seminars, was one in Miami with Judge Steven Leifman. The Judge told a story after story of instances early in his career where he realized that many of the petty crimes coming to him where a symptom of the community’s failure to adequately deal with mental illness, and he pointed out that not only was Florida woefully under funding mental health care, but that we also tended have an above average size of population that was dealing with mental illness.
In fairness, on the last point, the data is a bit mixed. According to Mental Health America, when you just look at data that ranks the prevalence of mental illness, Florida tends to be one of the healthier states, but when you look at rankings of states when it comes to access to mental health treatment, Florida ranks 44th. In addition, Florida ranks third in the nation, and 13th per capita, in the number of homeless, and Florida does have a higher than the national average per capita incidence of death from drug overdose. That being said, when you add all those factors up, Florida has a lot of people dealing with mental health and/or substance abuse issues – and if even just a small percentage of those people end up in courtrooms like Judge Leifman’s, we are talking about a lot of actual people.
Again, this isn’t unique to Florida, these problems exist everywhere – and in some cases, even more acutely than they do here.
For example, I went to college in a small town in Tennessee Appalachia. The county where I went to school had, according to the most recent data, opioids prescribed at a rate of 102 prescriptions per 100 people. In the next county over, the number jumps to 141, placing it as one of the worst counties in the nation for abuse. If I took you to places in these counties, these numbers wouldn’t surprise you. Here in Florida, fortunately these rates are falling – statewide, from a rate of 75 to 60 prescriptions per 100 people over the last few years, but this is still a place where prosperity has been uneven, and real problems still exist in every community. For families who are dealing with these issues, or like mine, who have dealt with these issues, the challenges are still real. Again America, Florida is not a witch, we are just like you.
So, what should we do about Florida Man? For one, I think part of living here is embracing the zany, and outright weird. As an old ad campaign about Florida once said, “it’s different here.”
Back in Leadership Florida, one of my classmates told the story of a teacher in a Florida school who was injured when a bird flying out of the everglades dropped a fish, a fish that landed on said teacher. There will be alligators who walk through neighborhoods, as well as people who wrestle them. There’s gonna be some guy who builds a fallout shelter for his pet opossum, and a bear that takes a nap on some lady’s porch. But its more than that. Living here is embracing the diversity of the place, respecting its history, and welcoming others who come through its doors. Our state has been, and will long continue to be, a frontier.
We are 21 million people, coming from literally all corners of the globe, and all the color of life that comes with that. I think we can celebrate those things without at the same time, being exploitive of those who are honestly struggling with life, as any of us could find ourselves. When those people make news, well, we all need to be more thoughtful in how we talk about those stories – me included. And we need to not ever be content being ranked as one of the worst in the nation for access to mental health treatments.
So please go read Bob’s piece. It is more worthy of your time than mine. And if you live here, be proud of it -- but remember, next time you make fun of Florida Man, remember, he or she came from somewhere – and that somewhere, is typically us, America.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 10:00PM There have been several internet memes going around that express the Florida things that Floridians are scared of, and as a self-identified Florida Man, I thought I would weigh in.
Now in fairness, I am not native Floridian. Until the age of 10, I lived in a smallish town in east central Illinois, but not only have I called this great state home since 1984, I can say I have visited every single county, a majority of its towns and cities, and having driven four cars in my career over the 200,000 mile mark, I've seen more of this place than most, thus I feel at least relatively competent and qualified to opine on this important, and oft-discussed subject.
So here goes – rather than ranking them, I am putting them into tiers.
Not really that scared of.
Sharks. Floridians are generally not scared of sharks – tourists, and people who have moved here are scared of sharks. Only one person has been killed by a shark in Florida in the last decade, which is fewer than have been killed by cannibals…in Florida. Not saying we like sharks, but it isn’t an existential fear. But nonetheless, they make the list.
Alligators. Floridians are also not typically scared of alligators – again, most of the fear comes from tourists. On the flip side, Floridians will usually try to get a picture of said alligator when they are close to one, mostly to get a reaction on Facebook from their non-Florida friends. Respect alligators? Hell Yes. Those dinosaur-like creatures have survived here without living in air conditioning or mosquito control (more on this later) for a lot longer than people have lived here. Gonna walk our dogs near one? No. But do we live in fear of them because they sometimes wander down the street? Nope.
Florida Man. Florida Man and Florida Woman live among us. They are our friends, and our families – and your friends and family as well. Think about it: Who lives in Florida? Well, the vast majority of Floridians either moved here, or are born to people who moved here. In other words, to paraphrase the words of former Delaware US Senate candidate, and noted wicken, Christine O’Donnell, We are not a witch – we are nothing you’ve heard America, Florida Man and Florida Woman is you. Own it America.
Tiny bit scared of.
Fire Ants. When I was a kid, we had a dog that once peed into a pile of fire ants, and never again stepped on the grass. Since Floridians generally don’t wear socks, or closed-toe shoes – particularly in the summer, fire ants are a real threat. See some guy running around the neighborhood frantically trying take off his shoes and asking to borrow your hose? No, he isn't possessed - he stepped in a fire ant pile. Don’t believe me – go walk through a pile in your flip-flops, and see what happens.
Mosquitoes. Florida wouldn’t be a place without mosquito control. No one would live here, because we have mutant mosquitoes that can bite through all three layers of clothes we own. Honestly, the person who invented mosquito control should probably be a Florida hero, with a monument in their honor. How bad are the mosquitoes? Sometimes, you will see Florida Man in long sleeve shirt on a 100-degree, 90 percent humidity, just to mitigate mosquitoes. For this reason, they are on the list.
Things legit a bit scary
Publix closing. We wouldn’t know where to get food if Publix closed – just ask any Floridian who forgot something they need for a holiday meal on one of the days they are actually closed. There are other grocery stores, allegedly, but most of us don’t know where they are.
Roaches/Palmetto Bugs. We don’t have those little roaches that you all freak out about – no, we have massive flying cockroaches, known as palmetto bugs, that are often big enough to hold up a bank. Ever want to know when someone new to Florida has moved into your neighborhood – just listen for the blood curdling scream of a new Floridian dealing with a palmetto bug flying at them for the first time.
Snakes. We have a lot of snakes here, and like most Floridians, the vast majority of snakes are harmless, and perform important tasks for society. That being said, we have several snakes that can and will legit kill you, hence you will often see Floridians post on facebook or twitter a picture of a snake, crowd-sourcing whether said snake is good for society, or about to kill them. We also have snakes in the everglades that can eat an entire deer, and we have snakes that jump out of trees along rivers, and we have snakes that have been known to work their way through septic plumbing and show up in people’s toilets.
Weather Under 50 – or in S Florida, under 65. Here in North Florida, it gets below freezing a few times a year, so we at least own a coat or a hoodie, but no one here he is prepared for any kind of weather. Go to South Florida, and when it is below 70, you will see people in boots and fur. Seeing someone in a sweatshirt, shorts and flip-flops when it is cold is normal – and comes from the sheer fact for most of us, that’s probably the warmest set of clothing we own.
Things that scare Floridians more than they let on.
Hurricanes. For all the appearances of Florida man drinking beer in a lawn chair during a cat 3, running down Main Street shirtless with an American flag, or shooting guns toward hurricanes, actual Floridians do take most hurricanes - or at least those above Cat 1 pretty seriously. Floridians are like animals sensing danger – they instinctively know when to get out of town. If a Floridian is getting out of dodge, you should to.
Evacuating from a hurricane. Ever spend 15 hours on the Florida turnpike, searching for gas and only eating Cinnabon from a toll plaza service plaza? Yeah, it sucks.
Driving. As my friend Tom Eldon says, Floridians drive as though they are a complete peace with God. Others have suggested, for example, that Floridians view turn signals as a sign of weakness. Florida interstates are kind of a bad combo of Mad Max, Survivor, and Seinfeld. I’ve driven in some unique foreign places, and well, I’ll take most over I-4. Add into it 100 million tourists a year, and the fact the state is seemingly an endless construction zone, and yeah, Floridians know driving here sucks.
Things that really scare Floridians.
Nothing. As the old tourism slogan goes, it is different here.
Thing that Floridians live in fear of.
Broken Air Conditioning. Like mosquito control, Florida would be largely uninhabitable without air conditioning. There is a reason why Florida has honored the inventor of air conditioning – himself a Floridian – with a statue in the United States Capitol. John Gorrie is a legit hero to everyone who lives here. All things being equal, this is really the only thing that truly frightens a Floridian -- except maybe, the combination of evacuating a hurricane in I-4 traffic without AC.
Monday, March 18, 2019 at 11:13PM There isn’t a day that goes by that someone, either in person or on-line, doesn't ask me why aren’t Democrats winning in Florida more often.
The truth is – it isn’t an easy question with a simple answer - and in reality, much of the answer in terms of candidate recruitment, and the quality of actual campaigns lies outside the realm of the average activist. But there is one thing that every Democrat can do – and every Democratic group can do to put candidates in a better place to win.
Register voters.
In Florida, Democrats register voters well for about four months every four years, and other than that, not so much. And yes, while there are groups that are doing good work, the numbers over the last ten years, are well, about as good as Blake Bortles QB rating as a member of the Jaguars.
Here are the raw numbers.
In 2008, when voters went to the polls to elect then Senator Barack Obama, Democrats had a voter registration advantage of just under 660,000 voters, which in terms of share of the electorate, was almost 6% more than the Republicans (42%-36%). Fast forward to the competitive Governor’s race of 2014, and the advantage was down to just over 450,000 voters, or an advantage of just under 4% (38.8%-35%). And when voters went to the polls in 2018, the advantage was down to just over 250,000 voters, with Democrats lead in voter registration share now below 2%.
In other words, over 10 years, Democrats saw their voter registration advantage drop by 400,000 voters.
And to put that into context:
In 2014, Crist lost by about 60,000 votes.
In 2016, Clinton lost by just over 100,000 votes.
In 2018, Gillum lost by just over 30,000 votes.
And Bill Nelson lost by about 10,000 votes.
You get the idea.
Register. Freaking. Voters.
Now, I know what you are going to say: Steve, you aren’t accounting for the purge, suppression, conservative Democrats switching parties, etc.
So, let’s take a deeper look at some of these numbers.
Let’s look at the Deep South Dixiecrat theory – of the statewide 400,000 voter margin gain Republicans have seen, about 150,000 can be attributed to the old Panhandle media markets. However, it isn’t as though these counties aren’t seeing growth – so that 150,000 isn’t all just party switching. And honestly, the GOP margins in North Florida aren’t substantially changing.
On flip side, take the Orlando media market, home to an exploding Puerto Rican population, and over the last ten years, despite the population shifts that should help my party, Republicans have registered more voters than Democrats, proof that alone, demographics isn't destiny. In fact, the only market that favors the Democrats over the last ten years is Miami, though for context, the Miami gains don't even make up for the GOP voter registration gains in the Jacksonville media market alone.
Yes, the laws make it hard to register voters. Yes, the purges disproportionally impact Democratic voters. Yes, registering voters is difficult, time consuming, and tedious work. But nothing is easy.
The reality is the electorate is substantially more diverse than it was ten years ago. In 2008, when Obama won, non-white registered voters made up just under 31% of the electorate. Today, that number is 37%. In fact, the only segment of the population making up a smaller share of the electorate than it did ten years ago are non-Hispanic white voters. Further, despite making up just 16.5% of the current registered voters, over the last ten years, the growth in the actual number of Hispanic voters has outpaced non-Hispanic whites by over 200,000 voters.
On paper, the electorate should be getting more Democratic. But it isn’t.
If Charlie Crist would have had Barack Obama’s electorate in 2014, he probably would have won. If Gillum and Nelson had either the 2008 or 2014 electorate, they also probably would have won.
And registering voters has a secondary, but equally important outcome: it puts people back into vital communities, and gives us a chance to engage community leaders on a year-round basis. People who are registering voters are also doing voter outreach, opinion leader outreach, and community engagement. Furthermore, by funding party organizers to do voter registration, we can address the very legitimate concerns many have about the party’s lack of inclusion and outreach – as well as put people in communities to make the pitch why new voters shouldn’t just be new voters – but they should be new Democratic voters. While the outside groups do really good work, for the sake of partisan organizing, nothing beats an actual partisan or candidate organizer.
People like to talk about the various “secrets” of how Barack Obama won – while other Democrats didn’t: one of those secrets – using voter registration to help reshape the electorate. For example, between 2006 and 2008, Democrats saw their registration advantage in Florida grow by almost the same 400,000 voters that we’ve lost since 2008. Without those gains, does Barack Obama win in Florida in 2008? Honestly, the answer is unlikely.
So yes, there is this one little trick you can do help elect more Democrats – help make the state look more Democratic: go to the Florida Democratic Party, and sign up to register voters, or write them a check so they can organize voters. Is it the only thing we have to do? No. But is it the most important thing that most activists and groups can do? Absolutely.
PS -- To my DUVAL Democratic friends -- we finally have a real quarterback (God willing) -- go register him to vote. :-)
Monday, December 10, 2018 at 10:19AM Let’s huddle up for a second and have a little chat about polling.
In 2018, I spoke to 25-30 groups and without fail, there were two questions always asked:
Now that the Jaguars have benched Bortles, we can dispense with the first question and focus on the second one.
There are basically two kinds of polls: the ones you don’t see, and the ones you do. Candidates who are spending millions and millions on television need good data, and that is the polling you don’t see – or at best rarely see. In the public line, these are the dreaded “internal polls” – polls that when they see the light of day must be wrong, because they are released with an agenda. However internal polling is typically pretty spot on – for two very connected reasons: political pollsters stake their reputation on good numbers, because candidates must have the best information to make decisions – and candidates spend a lot of money for those polls to be accurate. For example, during the 2018 Democratic primary for Governor, while the public polling missed it, our internal Graham polling was pretty clear that Jeff Greene's negative attacks on Phil Levine and Gwen created significant downward movement for the frontrunners in the race and space for Andrew Gillum to rise -- just as in the same way, the DeSantis private polling, which was released, showed his surge over Putnam to be earlier, more significant, and more sustained than the public polling reported.
Then there are the public polls.
First, longtime readers of this blog will know my issues with public polling did not start in 2016 or 2018. Longtime political analyst Charlie Cook once called public polling “dime store junk,” a phrase that sometimes, is charitable. I’ve been particularly harsh on Quinnipiac (I believe I've called their polling a "dumpster fire" and once suggested they couldn't count the topings on a pizza), not because I have any particular dislike for the school, or their beloved mascot Boomer the Bobcat, but because their polling is often cited as a benchmark. When organizations like Quinnipiac publish polls, given the brand they have created, people take them at face value -- despite the fact their polling in Florida has often been a disaster – like the Jaguars football season.
Let me give you an example. The 2012 Romney/Obama Florida race was one of the most stable races I’ve ever been around. Both candidates started with a pretty high floor, and while there was movement, there were never any big shifts in the race, and the race never moved far from even. Yet, over a four-month period, Quinnipiac had the race go from +6 Romney to +9 Obama – then within a month, back to Romney +1. Over that period, the RCP polling average moved a couple tenths of a point. Another university pollster called the race for Romney just weeks after they had Obama +3. In reality, the race was always very close.
Public polling in the Governor’s race here in Florida in 2018 was, to quote noted linguist Deion Sanders, a total “shibacle.” Back to the Quinnipiac, I felt like I spent most of October dealing with texts/emails/tweets from activists/donors/supporters wondering why I kept saying the Senate and Governor’s race were close, when the Q poll kept saying it wasn’t. And they weren’t alone – the bulk of public polling lived in a reality that was separate from the real one.
So where is the disconnect? Let’s explore a few things:
And keep in mind, beyond this, polling that is done well typically has a 95% confidence rate – meaning that 5% of polls that are done are going to be off.
The problem with these issues is they create a lot of “noise” in polling – as in the 2012 example of Quinnipiac showing a 15 point move in a race over four months that maybe moved 2 points.
And here’s where it starts to go south. The media reports public polling as fact, typically with very little context, and often with no regard for a pollster’s record – particularly as news coverage looks more and more like sports coverage, with the focus on who is winning or losing. Put numbers next to a name, and add a little paragraph about the poll, and someone will at least tweet it. And supporters of different campaigns latch on to one poll or another, to bolster their own arguments.
I do think there is a place for public polling, and a lot of groups do a ton of fascinating work. For example, you should read everything the Pew Trusts puts out – not because of their great horserace numbers, but because they engage in fascinating surveys about the political and cultural fabric of America.
But since I don’t think public horserace polling is going away, here are a few ideas on how we should consume it going forward:
There are some journalists who are wise in how they report polling, and not every public poll is a mess, but overall, the incentive is for groups to create public polls, because public polls create news – and news creates interest in the organization doing the polling. And while I don’t believe organizations intentionally publish suspect data, again, there is little incentive to tighten up their internal controls and try to get things closer to right. Until the news media decides to collectively be more careful in reporting this data, it is up to the rest of us to be skeptical.
Monday, November 19, 2018 at 12:49AM 
OK, it is time to talk about that thing that happened. No, not the Jaguars blowing a 16-point lead in the 4th quarter – though I have plenty to say about that – I am talking about the election.
Before I get into it, this election was the third consecutive Governor’s race decided by a point or less, bracketing two consecutive Presidential elections decided by a point. This drives homes two points: One, Florida, for all its dynamic growth and demographic changes, is very stable; and Two, when organizations like Quinnipiac try to peddle off polls showing candidates in Florida with 6-point leads, or 9-point leads, you now know what to do with that information (a post/rant on public polling is coming soon).
There are a lot of reasons why Florida is very competitive – you can read my take here – but it is what it is. Big chunks of Florida cancel each other out, and both parties have large, and quite dug-in bases – and neither have a base that alone gets them to 50% + 1. Winning Florida (or losing it) is about managing the margins throughout Florida.
A couple of things – for the sake of this exercise, I am going to look at the Governor’s race, for one, and only one reason: the consistency of comparing races over time. In terms of the Senate race, much of the difference between Nelson and Gillum occurred in places like Brevard, where Nelson has a very long history, and Pinellas, where again, I think Nelson’s history on the ballot helped him out. Gillum did slightly better in Duval, and in Orange/Osceola counties – which is likely a testament to the work Scott did after Hurricane Maria as much as anything. But overall, the margins are similar.
Also, there are a lot of ways we could view this race, but since it is my blog, I am going to start by breaking it down as GOP base markets (Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers) versus DEM base markets (Tallahassee, Gainesville, West Palm, and Miami) – and the I-4 markets (Orlando & Tampa).
Let me start at where I ended a piece in early October, my view at the time on the race: “While I am currently bullish about my party’s chances, both from the standpoint of mood, and Dem opportunities for growth, if DeSantis and Scott are able to replicate Trump like share of the vote in the large suburban and exurban counties around I-4, things could get very tight, very quickly.”
So, let’s break that statement into two buckets – Dem opportunities for growth – and the large suburban and exurban counties around I-4, starting with the former first.
If we go back and look at the previous two Governor’s races, the two parties pretty much matched the other in their base counties. In 2010, Democrats won their base markets by 33,840 more than the GOP did, and in 2014, the margin was 14,360. Fast forward to 2018, and Andrew Gillum won the base Democratic markets by 109,809 more votes than DeSantis won the base Republican markets.
How did Gillum expand the Democratic advantage in the base markets? One word: Miami.
In fact, if you add up the three non-Miami Democratic markets, Gillum and Crist won them by almost the same margin (102,390 for Gillum, 102,698 for Crist), but Gillum won the Miami market by some 143K more votes than Crist did.
In fact, the same dynamic played out for DeSantis– outside of Fort Myers, he won the other base Republican markets by almost exactly what Scott won them by, but because Gillum was able keep him in check elsewhere, particularly in the Jacksonville market, DeSantis’ growth in the GOP market came nowhere near matching Gillum’s in his.
*There is an argument that DeSantis did a good job keeping the Miami, particularly Dade margins, from being even larger, but that is for a longer look at Miami.
So how did DeSantis win? The second bucket of this exercise, which is the same way Trump did. Literally, exactly the same way.
As I sat in under the press tent at the Gillum Election Night Party, trying to make my rain-soaked laptop work, I felt the same sense of doom as I felt in 2016 -- twice. First when the Pasco absentees came in, then around 7:50pm, when it became clear the Gillum/Nelson leads were not good enough to overcome the likely GOP advantage from the counties that would report at 8:00 EST, when the Central Time Zone polls closed. The exurban counties in I-4 had done it again.
We know that Democrats grew their margins – significantly, in the places where my team historically runs up the score – and more than the GOP did in their traditional markets. But then we get to I-4. Gillum lost the I-4 markets by 146K votes, or just under 70K more votes than Crist did. Nelson lost the markets by slightly less – 138K or so votes. Those margins more than offset the gains elsewhere and added up to a loss.
But that is not the end of the story – and here is where the 2016 comparison sets in – just like Clinton, Gillum ran up new high-water mark margins in the urban areas, particularly around Orlando. In total, Gillum won the urban counties of I-4 by 120,000 more votes than Crist did – and this is despite winning Pinellas County by some 30,000 votes less than Crist (the Crist margins in Pinellas were much more about Crist than they were about Democratic party performance). However, where Crist lost the suburban and exurban counties around I-4 by about 157K votes, Gillum lost them by 355K.
Or more simply: the counties around the urban I-4 counties delivered DeSantis with more of an increased margin than the Miami media market delivered for Gillum. In a race where most everything else stayed the same – that made the difference.
Here is another way to look at it:
If you look at 2014, the Scott margin of victory pretty much matched his win in the Orlando media market, with his margins from North Florida, plus Tampa and Fort Myers almost exactly balancing out what Crist won South Florida. Guess what happened again? Literally the exact same thing.
For Democrats, the Orlando math is a good way to highlight the problem – it is very hard to win a pure turnout fight. When you look at 2018, the margins in urban Orlando were spectacular, and just like on Election Night in 2008, looked almost unmatchable. But the problem for Democrats – the GOP margins everywhere else grew too, in some cases by a lot more, and cancelled out the gains. For example, Gillum won Orange County by 85K more votes than Crist did – but if you add up the six republican counties in the Orlando market, he lost them by about 84K more votes than Crist.
Broadening out to the two markets combined, just like Clinton, Gillum won the I-4 urban counties by more votes than Obama did in 2012. But whereas Clinton lost the non-urban I-4 counties by nearly 450K, and Gillum by 355K, Obama lost them by under 220K votes. In fact, to prove the point of how important it is for Democrats to be more competitive in these counties, had Obama in 2012 lost the non-urban I-4 counties by as much as Gillum, we would have lost Florida that year.
Nothing demonstrates this shift more than Volusia County, a place Obama won in 2008, lost by about 3K votes in 2012, and where both Nelson and Gillum lost by more than 22K votes – or the three counties north of Tampa (Pasco, Hernando, and Citrus), where Obama lost by 23K votes in 2008, 37K votes in 2012, but both Gillum and Nelson lost by more than 75K votes.
And here is where my frustration sets in – and not with either campaign – but the mindset generally of approaching the state, this idea that Florida can be won entirely in a few corners, or that Florida is just a turnout state. Look at the difference between the Ag Commissioner’s race, and the Governor’s race. In the Ag Commissioner’s race, the Democratic candidate, Nikki Fried, had better margins in 38 counties compared to the Governor’s race, including 33 that both candidates lost. In other words, losing by a little less in a lot of places added up to the difference between winning by a little, and losing by a little.
This piece is not a criticism of any campaign. God knows I’ve been on enough conference calls to know campaigns must make hard decisions, and often those decisions, particularly the ones Nelson often faced against a far better financed opponent, were a choice between two sub-prime options -- and that all of those decisions look easier in hindsight, and when you are on the outside. And to their credit – especially Mayor Gillum, the campaigns did spend a lot of time in some of these communities.
Instead, I lay this out to answer the question I’ve gotten a lot this week: what can we do differently? From my view, the answer today is the same as it was when I got this question after Bush beat Kerry in Florida – you can’t take on these kinds of margins in Republican counties and hope to make it up elsewhere. Sure, you might get a win here or there, but over time, it is just a losing proposition. And here’s the thing – the same math exists in 2020, and in 2022 – in other words, getting right up to the edge of winning, unless my side is willing to drive a conversation about the math problem that we have.
There are a lot of things to fix, but step one is voter registration. In 2008, when our campaign shut down, Democrats had a nearly 700K advantage in voter registration. Today it is just over 250K. We need a sustained and permanent voter registration effort, which by its own nature, will keep us to remain engaged in the types of emerging communities where we are growing – as well force us to engage in many communities where we have not.
I have a few pieces I will work on over the holidays – the aforementioned one on why I think the public polling continues to be a mess in Florida, as well as some more specific deep dives into individual markets.
Thanks again for reading. I really do appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving.
PS -- At least the Noles stomped the Gators in basketball on Election Night. :-)
Monday, October 29, 2018 at 9:47AM To: People who can’t stand Mondays. Everyone else stop reading.
From: Steve Schale
Re: 8 days out
It finally cooled off in Florida, but the voting got hot. As of this morning: 2,726,392
This breaks down:
Republicans: 1,151,593 (42.3)
Democrats: 1,092,547 (40.1)
NPA/Minor: 482,252 (17.7)
Republican edge is 59,046 (+2.2%)
Yesterday, we were at 2,580,347, with the GOP holding an edge of 70,415 votes (+2.7%).
On Saturday, it was 2,316,413, with the GOP edge at 74,334 (+2.2)
Democrats made up all the ground they lost late last weekend, winning the weekend vote by roughly 15,500, or just under 4%. Most of that came yesterday, when Democrats won the day by 11K votes. My home team had a very good weekend.
Before my Democratic friends on twitter get too excited, there wasn’t much in the way of vote by vote by mail ballots, so unless the 118K or so more Democrats than Republicans who hold an absentee ballot #BringItToThePostOffice, the GOP lead will likely bounce back a bit tomorrow morning when the weekend absentees get added into the mix.
For comparison, in 2014, right at 2.2 million voters had voted, Republicans had about a 140,000-ballot lead at this point – and led by around 6.4%. In 2018, the GOP lead was about 9K votes at this point out of 4 million votes. It was basically tied.
Republicans lead for one reason, and one reason only: Democratic return rates for vote by mail are lagging Republican rates – by seven points in terms of the rate of return. Right now, statewide the return rate is about 49% -- though given what is currently sitting in the mailboxes at Supervisors offices, there is no question more than 50% of Floridians who requested a ballot have mailed it back. Again, those numbers update in the morning.
Republicans have now returned 54.4% of all their requested ballots, Democrats 47.6%, and NPA’s 42.5. Statewide, the return rate is 36%.
In total, just over 3.42 million ballots have been requested – again far more than 2014, and more than 2016.
Here is what is remaining:
Democratic unreturned ballots: 722,498
Republican unreturned ballots: 604,885
NPA unreturned ballots: 412,736
The electorate is continuing to trend more diverse. Not including Sunday’s data, which will make these numbers even more diverse, the electorate looks like this (again thru Saturday): 73% White, 10.5% Black, 11.7% Hispanic. Compare this to Thursday last week, when the electorate was 75% White, 11.5% Hispanic, and 8.5% Black, though as in-person early voting, the electorate is trending more diverse. Keep in mind, vote-by-mail in Florida tends to be far more white than the final electorate.
That being said, when looking at the ethnicity of who is left to vote, it is clear that Black turnout is rounding into shape – if just the people who voted in 2014 show up to vote between now and Election Day, the Black (reminder, Black voters in Florida include African American, Caribbean, and some Hispanic) vote will land at about 12.5%. And again, that is if no one new shows up. I suspect the Black share will end up right around the Black share of total voter registration, which is just over 13.
If there is a concern I have about turnout from my party perspective – where as the Black share of the electorate has been trending up, Hispanic has been pretty flat. Outside of Cuban Republicans, Hispanics tend to vote later, and more on Election Day, but this is something to watch this week and into next weekend.
Looking at the electorate that has voted, and the electorate left to vote, there is good news and bad news for my home team.
In terms of non-2014 votes, slightly more than 30% of the electorate did not vote in 2014. Those voters are younger (30% under 50 – and 17% under 35 compared to 22% under 50 and 8% under 35 for all early voters), more Democratic (Dems are +4%), and more diverse – particularly more Hispanic.
In terms of people who 2014 voters who have not voted, there are about 200,000 more Republicans. Dems make some of that up if the trends with lower propensity voters keep up, but not all of it. In other words, after you read this memo, if you are for Nelson and Gillum, go turn out some voters.
In terms of the vote by media market, it is starting to look like Florida. The two markets most impacted by the storm: Panama City and Tallahassee, are still down. Miami, as a share of the electorate, continues to grow – and while this will likely flatline or drop a bit as some other areas even out, it is well ahead of where it was at this point in 2014 and 2016. Orlando, arguably the most important market this cycle, continues to be very competitive – and robust in terms of turn out. Fort Myers, after blowing up in early vote by mail, is coming back to earth. Tampa looks like Tampa.
I looked at 2018 versus 2014 by county margins, there are a lot of high points for my home team:
This data reads this way 2014 margin -- 2018 margin; (2014 share -- 2018 share)
Broward: 36,893 -- 74,654 (57-27 -- 58-24)
Dade: -31 -- 22,153 (41-41 -- 44-35)
Orange: 4,611 -- 23,619 (43-39 -- 49-33)
Hillsborough: -1,584 -- 9,556 (40-42 -- 44-39)
DUUUVAL: -8,310 -- 472 (38-50 -- 44-43)
Alachua (UF): 3,989 -- 11,255 (53-33 -- 58-28)
And in the swing counties:
Seminole: -9,032 -- -3,728 (32-50 -- 37-43)
Pinellas: -7,921 -- -1,855 (37-43 -- 40-41)
St. Lucie: 748 -- 2,853 (41-39 -- 44-38)
What is interesting, and again is good news – even in many of the bigger GOP counties where they have a higher margin today than four years ago, Democratic turnout is keeping it in check. For example:
In Lee (Fort Myers), Sumter (Villages), Collier (Naples), St. Johns, Clay (near Jax), while the GOP margin is higher than it was four years ago, the partisan share of vote difference is closer for the Democrats. Take the aforementioned St. Johns County, one of the most Republican counties in the state. Republicans have a 3,758 bigger vote margin, but the model has gone from 63-23 R in 2014 to 58-28 in 2018. Winning Florida for my side is all about those little shifts.
One last little data point, then off to work. Right now, statewide turnout is about 20.5%. Among Republicans, it is 24.6%, and among Democrats its 22.1% (NPA is at 13%). Republican turnout rates are higher in 61 of 67 counties. I point this out because while I do believe that there is a lot of data from the weekend that looks good, Democrats keep in mind that Republicans are blowing out turnout as well. More people are voting overall – and there are probably at least 4.5 million more people to vote – and if only the most certain show up, which they will, the GOP will have a solid advantage in turnout.
I feel better about where my side is today than I did last week, but I don’t feel great. This still feels closer than the polls, and while I absolutely believe NPA voters will decide it – as they typically do in Florida, how close things are from a partisan perspective dictates by how much our side has to win the NPA vote.
And while it may be a bye week for my hapless Jaguars, it is far from a bye week for those of you all who want to bring it home.
One last note: Last week, my side lost one of its brightest rising stars. Tyrone Gayle was a kid from Jacksonville – we went to the same high school (though he was much younger) and took his charge to be a change agent seriously. In his short 30 years on this planet, he touched more people than most of us could in a lifetime. He battled stage 4 cancer for more than two years, and while most of us bitch about having a cold, Tyrone went through treatment while still during a Presidential campaign, never losing his spirit. A colleague of him said: “Tyrone could fly, but that was never enough for him – he wanted us all to fly with him, so he elevated every person he touched, lifted each and every one of us. His body failed him last night, but his spirit soars on, flying above us, forever lifting us up.”
While I can’t say we were all that close, he was my friend & fellow hopelessly optimistic Jaguars fan -- and more importantly, I was just an admirer and fan of his, a fellow EHS and Duval kid who did good, and one whose limitless potential was sadly cut short. F Cancer. #GayleNation
