Thread: The Daily 202: Why Florida is Trump's best swing state

The Daily 202: Why Florida is Trump's best swing state

August 18 at 8:41 AM



THE BIG IDEA: Florida is always the swingiest of swing states, and once again it is ground zero in the presidential contest. The twist this year is that Donald Trump runs uniquely well there.

While Hillary Clinton has opened up durable double-digit leads in states like Virginia and Colorado, polls show a much tighter contest in Florida.

This is a change. Florida used to more closely mirror the country. Recall George Bush versus Al Gore in 2000.

Quinnipiac University published polling last week that showed the race statistically tied in the Sunshine State (46-45), even as Trump trailed by 4 points in Ohio and 10 points in Pennsylvania. “The closeness of the Florida race is seen inside the numbers,” said Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown. “Independent voters are split 42-41. … Clinton and Trump have the same favorable rating among voters (39 percent).”

Florida is the only battleground that moved in Trump’s direction after both conventions. Seven states were surveyed by NBC, the Wall Street Journal and Marist before and after. In North Carolina, Trump went from down 6 points to down 9 points; in Virginia, from down 9 to down 13; in Colorado, from down 8 to down 14. In Florida, he went from down 7 to down 5.

Down 5 points is obviously not a good place to be, and the last poll to show Trump ahead in Florida came out in early July. But it’s one of many data points that underscore his relative strength down there.



-- I asked two strategists who have a proven record of winning statewide what’s going on:

“It is a function of my party's struggles with whites,” said Steve Schale, who ran Florida for Barack Obama. “For every point of share we lose (i.e. Obama getting 37, Clinton getting 36), she needs to win 4 points more with Hispanics. If we were approaching 2008 levels with whites, she'd be up by 6 to 7 points (we won by 3).”

There are around 400,000 fewer white Democrats in Florida than there were in 2008, driven by rural whites in the Panhandle changing parties and newcomers tending to be more conservative. “So now you have a Democratic base which is proportionally much more black and Hispanic, and thus, far more predictable,” explained Schale, who is based in Tallahassee. “In the same way, the GOP base has gotten really white, as new Hispanics are choosing ‘D’ or No Party Affiliation. … Even as you look at a population that is undergoing dynamic change, other cultural and economic factors, as well as white migration into Florida, seems to balance it back out.”

“Trump's brashness sells in Florida better than in most places,” said Curt Anderson, the architect of Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s victories in 2010 and 2014. “There are quite a few older white folks in Florida who think the federal government should be closed down, and think that the only thing worse than Barack Obama is Hillary Clinton. … So when Trump says impolitic things—things that may be detrimental to him in Wisconsin—in Florida there are a lot folks on the golf course early in the morning and at the buffet at 5 p.m. who are saying ‘Damn right!’”

“If this race is close, Trump will win Florida,” adds Anderson, a partner at OnMessage Inc. “Count on that and write it down. It is possible that Trump could lose the race decisively and still carry Florida.”



- Like many of Florida’s septuagenarians, Trump is a New Yorker who owns property in the state and enjoys wintering there. It was those folks shouting “damn right” on the golf course who helped Trump decisively crush Marco Rubio in the March Republican primary, ending the home-state senator’s campaign. But it’s the general election now. So there are a lot more minority voters, which is why Rubio, who decided to run for reelection, now significantly outperforms Trump in every poll. (Marco will announce today that he raised $5.5 million in the past seven weeks and has $4.6 million cash on hand…)

It should come as no surprise that Trump’s resiliency can be chalked up mainly to his strength among white men. A Monmouth University poll published Tuesday showed Clinton up 9 points, 48 percent to 39 percent, in Florida. Trump pulled just 19 percent among Hispanic, black and Asian voters (who make up about one-third of the electorate). While Trump led among white voters overall by 14 points (51-37), he was up among white men by 40 points (64-24) and white women by just 10 points (49-39). “The gender split among white voters in Florida is huge,” said Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray. “Men are drawn to Trump’s message while women are not. These offsetting factors give Clinton the edge.”

-- To be sure, some of this is bigger than Trump. Florida has leaned a little more Republican than the country overall in the last few cycles. In 2012, Obama won the national vote by 4 points but Florida by just 1 point. In 2008, Obama’s national margin was 7 points, compared with 3 points in Florida. “So we should expect Florida to be a bit more Republican than the nation overall,” says The Post’s in-house pollster Scott Clement. “Virginia, on the other hand, was extremely close to the nation overall in the last two elections. Both were +4 in 2012, and in 2008, Virginia was +6 while the nation was +7 Obama.”

-- There is no path at all for Trump without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, especially as other states move away from him. This is why Clinton and Trump have both spent four days campaigning in the state since mid-June.



-- What you must understand to win: “Florida is a state, not a place.” That’s the main argument in a handy primer that Schale, the Democrat who worked for Obama, posted on his personal blog last week. The state lacks much commonality or shared experience, and almost everyone has come from somewhere else. “The old saying about Florida is you go north to go south,” he writes. “North Florida feels like the traditional south, with large rural areas, conservative towns like Jacksonville and Pensacola, liberal college towns, etc., while the rest of the state feels like wherever it came from. Go to Tampa, or most anywhere on the west coast, and there is more of a Midwestern feel – as most who got there, came down the I-75 corridor. The east coast can feel more northeastern in attitude, homage to the I-95 corridor that brought them here. There is also a coastal/interior split.”

Schale divides the state – which has 20 million residents and 9 million voters – into five commonwealths:

• North Florida (I-10 corridor, running from Jacksonville to Pensacola, is 17 percent of the vote.)
• Orlando (The fastest growing media market in the state already has one-fifth of its population.)
• Tampa and Southwest Florida (One-third of the vote, roughly the size of Missouri)
• Southeast Florida (The Palm Beach media market, plus Broward County, has the population of Oregon, or about 20% of Florida.)
• Miami (“85 percent of the population is non-white, and that number is growing rapidly. It is really its own city-state, much more like a Hong Kong, or a Singapore, than it is a city within a state. Roughly the population of Nevada … In terms of voter performance, the area makes up just under 11 percent of the statewide vote, a difference which points to the sheer number of non-citizen residents.”)

“Florida isn’t competitive because of its unique nature, like an Iowa,” he concludes, “but it becomes competitive in sum when you add up all of its many parts.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...249a2fe363ba26

All the states are competitive.

GO TRUMP! GO WIN THEM ALL!!