Why Florida Could Go Blue In 2020

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Electorally, Florida bounces around like a beach ball. In 2008 and 2012, as Americans nationwide backed Barack Obama for president, Florida voted Democratic too. But in 2016, when Donald Trump reclaimed the White House for the Republicans, Florida switched its allegiance to the GOP. Indeed, the Sunshine State has voted for the national winner in each of the past six presidential elections.

But in 2018, Florida stopped following national trends. In a great year for Democrats nationwide, which saw them net 40 House seats and seven governorships, the “blue wave” stopped at Florida’s sandy beaches. Although the national political environment leaned almost 9 percentage points in Democrats’ favor, Republican Rick Scott defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by 0.1 points, and Republican Ron DeSantis defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum by 0.4 points in the open-seat race for governor. The results prompted some pundits to relabel Florida a “red state” going into the pivotal 2020 election.

They’re right, to a degree: Florida has long been a slightly red state. Since 2004, it has consistently voted 3 or 4 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections. (Indeed, polls of Florida are currently1 0.9 points better for President Trump than national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages.) But could what happened in 2018 — when Florida was so much redder than the nation that it was out of reach for Democrats, even in a wave election — happen again in 2020?

It’s true that, on the surface, Nelson and Gillum barely improved upon Hillary Clinton’s 1.2-point loss in Florida in 2016. Accounting for the much bluer national environment, that would imply either that Florida is immune to shifts in the national mood or that the state lurched to the right sometime in the intervening two years. But as the map below shows, Nelson actually performed from 3 to 14 points better than Clinton in a majority of Florida counties, even though he lost many of her voters elsewhere in the state. (Gillum’s map told a similar story, so we’re not showing it, as of the two 2018 Democratic candidates, Nelson — a moderate white man in his 70s — is a better stand-in for the party’s presumptive 2020 presidential nominee, Joe Biden.) This is important because it underscores that the state is not “wave-proof”; instead, it’s made up of some complex coalitions that we’ll dive into more momentarily.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-florida-could-go-blue-in-2020/

[Jose Garcia]

1. Florida's problem in 2018 was that we had underwealming Democratic candidates

Gillum was too far to the left, and had some ethical baggage. Nelson was a fine Senator, but he really hadn't done enough to get his name out to voters during his last term.

[Stuart G]

2. Thank You for posting , K & R. There is one reason why Florida will go blue in November

Trump & DeSantis are worthless people who did nothing to prevent thousands from dying. That's it.
.......and that is not very hard for anyone to see...Is it?

[secondwind]

3. Hear, hear!!!

[lagomorph777]

5. Trump and DeSatanist have done everything possible to kill Floridians, especially

their own fecal followers. This reduces the available number of votes on their side, and pisses off the survivors as well.

[poli-junkie]

4. And it's distressing to read 23% increase in hospitalizations for Florida's children.

[mcar]

6. The Republicans cheated

That's what happens when they keep it close.

I will never believe that an electorate who voted 65% for Amendment 4 to restore voting rights to returning citizens, would also vote in Scott and DeathSantis.

[Awsi Dooger]

7. We nominated Gillum instead of Graham, then got outmaneuvered everywhere

That's what happened in 2018. It was no great mystery. Republicans were door to door throughout 2018. I reported it here. Dependable afternoon swarm. I'd tell them to get out of here, that I would never vote for a Republican in my life. They'd laugh then someone else would show up a day or two later. Meanwhile I never heard from Nelson or Gillum one time. That type of emphasis gap is racking up net votes all over the state.

Nelson ran a lazy campaign, which was pathetic because all of the fundamentals were in his favor. He didn't seem to grasp that Scott was like a co-incumbent. Scott did all the little things like learning to speak just enough Spanish to do commercials in Spanish. The GOP dominated the Hispanic airwaves. And I'm sure that applied to social media as well.

Still, both races would have gone Democratic if we merely nominated Gwen Graham instead of Gillum. I posted here on election night the astounding percentage of Floridians who said Gillum was too liberal for the state. It was 44% in the initial exit poll then adjusted upward to 46% to fit the actual electorate. I have never seen anything close to 46% while doing this since 1992. It was the epitome of an unforced error. Basically very few who didn't vote for Gillum even considered him. Gillum was easily tagged as a socialist. The comparisons to Venezuela were everywhere in South Florida. Cubans got scared.

We nominated a scandal plagued guy who was too far left for a 2018 electorate that was older and more conservative than presidential years. That is always the case in Florida. Scott won all 3 times narrowly in midterm cycles. He wouldn't have won any of those races during presidential years.

I am very disappointed that 538 didn't emphasize the situational variance.