TBTimes John Romano: In FL Republicans make up only 34.9 percent of the registered voters

[onenote]

41. 39% D; 35% R; 23% Ind; 3% minor party. Its a turnout problem, not fraud.

There are a lot of factors as to why Florida, despite having somewhat more registered Democrats than repubs, goes red statewide.

First, the number of registered Ds may be misleading; there are a lot of older voters in Florida that may have started out as registered Democrats but who now lean R but haven't bothered to change their registration (in the Scott-Crist race, exit polls showed a 16 percent margin for Scott with voters 65 and up; those voters made up 25 percent of the voters -- as many as 18-24, 24-29, and 30-39 year old voters combined). Second, turnout: in the Scott-Crist race repubs made up 35 percent of the voters showing up at the polls, while Democrats only turned out 31 percent of the voters. Even the independent vote turnout (33%) topped the Democratic turnout.

As for the state senate, there were 20 seats up for election. Yes, the repubs didn't lose any of their seats. But neither did the Democrats. In all 20 seats, there was no change in party control. Which shouldn't surprise anyone since 15 of the 20 were uncontested.

Finally, turning to the state house, in 69 (57.5%) of the 120 seats up for election, there was only one major party candidate running for election. A total of 28 Democrats and 41 Republicans were guaranteed election barring unforeseen circumstances. In two of the instances where a repub unseated a Democrat, the Democrat had only held the seat for 2 years and had won in 2012 by 1 percent or less. Turnout. Turnout. Turnout. Democrats who did well in 2012 when the Democratic voters made up 35 percent of those voting and repubs only 33 percent, and when voters 18-40 outnumbered voters 65 and older by a 30% - 24% margin, suffered in 2014.

Its an easy out to scream voter fraud. But that simply avoids the real issues: (1) gerrymandering that creates seats that are so safe that over half of the house seats and 75 percent of state senate seats don't even have two major party candidates running.