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Focus on Florida
In a word, "yes."
Florida politics really isn't nearly as complicated as people make it out to be, at least on the statewide level. I can actually summarize the state politically in a few points:
1. We are not a Southern state in our culture, nor in our politics. I cannot state that emphatically enough. As you can probably tell, I detest the South and Southern culture and had I believed that Florida was a part of that world, I would have left upon graduating from high school. But of course, given our Confederate past there are some exceptions; in general, you will find significant Southern cultural elements in the rural counties in the Panhandle, around Jacksonville, and roughly north of Ocala - but even there, you'll find some notable exceptions (i.e., areas such as Flagler County and Gainesville, which while in the northern more conservative "Southern influenced" part of the state, are really not Southern in culture.) The only part of the state that is decidedly Southern is the Panhandle, but they represent a rather negligible percent of the population (around 7%.) As a comparison, liberal Palm Beach County, dominated by Northeastern migrants and the smallest of the 3 South Florida counties, comprises a slightly larger share of the state population than these dozens of rural counties.
If you need any proof of the political translation of our non-Southern culture, notice how social conservative Mike Huckabee, who appealed so strongly to Southerners, ran into a brick wall in Florida; he drew only 14% of our GOP vote as opposed to the 34% he won in Tennessee and Georgia and 41% in Alabama (he got 12% of the vote in California and 11% in New York state; which group of states is Florida closer to in this regard?? Hmmm....) I dare you to find a congressional district in one of those states that would elect someone with the politics of a Debbie Wasserman Schultz!
2. We are generally a state of moderates, but with occasional excesses of right-wing Republicanism. Regardless of those conservative excesses (which I apologize for), politicians like Bill Nelson and Charlie Crist are more indicative of Florida politics than ideologues like Jeb Bush and Mel Martinez (Martinez, for the record, only so barely eked out a victory in 2004, largely by riding the coattails of Dubya and getting many Hispanics in Dade County to vote along ethnic lines, even though they may have disagreed with his politics - even so, he split highly Hispanic Dade 50/50 with Betty Castor.)
3. You're going to hear the press make a big fuss about how Democrats have a 600,000+ advantage in voter registration. Floridians know to ignore such statistics. First, the larger than typical number of NPA (non-party affiliated) voters in the state means that any close competition will be decided by independents, not party loyalists. Secondly, a sizeable number of Florida Democrats - and this principally applies to wags in the Panhandle and Northern counties - are effectively modern-day Dixiecrats. They've been on the rolls as Democrats their entire lives, but they are so conservative that nobody would ever confuse them for a Democrat a la Hillary Clinton. It goes without saying that McCain will be getting their votes, just as Bush did in 2004 and 2000.
4. Florida has two decidedly conservative areas: the more Southern in culture Panhandle + Northeast (centered around Jacksonville) + areas in North Central Florida outside of Gainesville (let's call this block of territory "North Florida"), and Southwestern coast south of Tampa Bay, including the inland agricultural counties of the Heartland ("Southwest Florida.") Southwest Florida is where you will find some of the largest concentrations of old people, mostly retiree migrants, in the country, and it has been a remarkably high growth area over the last 10 years (I'm ignorning the Heartland in this analysis; it is sparsely populated and solidly Republican.) It is a conservative area, but it is not the same type of fiery, reactionary Southern-oriented conservatism that you will find in North Florida. The state's liberal Democratic bastion is South Florida, the state's three most populous counties on the Southeast coast and where I call home - Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Monroe County, home to the Keys, is not as consistent in its voting as its three mainland neighbors but is fairly liberal in culture nonetheless (ever walk down Duval Street on a Saturday night?) That leaves the vast central area of the state - home to the large cities of Orlando and Tampa Bay - as a rather fickle swing area. This is the infamous "I-4 swing corridor", and in a close election it is almost always this part of the state that will determine the victor.
So really, the calculus for Obama to win Florida is remarkably simple: run up the margins in liberal South Florida, home to a third of the state's population, use those impressive margins to nullify certain Republican victories in conservative North and Southwest Florida, and then marginally outperform McCain in the I-4 swing region.
Simple. Really. Except that winning in Central Florida has eluded Democrats in the manner that sex eludes Carnegie Mellon undergrads (hey, I couldn't resist that one! Forgive me... : - D )
In fact, Obama has two additional things to worry about: Florida has never voted for a truly liberal Presidential candidate, and Florida has never elected an African American to a significant statewide office. Obama, alas, is a truly liberal African American. Do the math.
Here's what a potential Obama victory in Florida would look like graphically (and I do love my election maps!):
I'm going to refer to the counties by name in this analysis; if you don't know Florida counties by heart, this map might be helpful.
The red counties are the ones that I see no possible way of Obama winning. Out of the question, but he does not need them to win. So instead, I'll look at the blue counties and my two "pink" counties on the map:
1. Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade - Obama winning here, in liberal, diverse, urbanized South Florida, is not a question; margins, margins, margins are what matters. He needs to push the Miami-Dade margin to as close to 60% as possible (I estimate he will win in Dade with 55 - 58% of the vote), keep Broward in the very high 60's (probably 65 - 69%, but could even exceed 70% with a great turnout effort - this is Florida's liberal stronghold, after all), and push Palm Beach to the mid-60's (likely will be 60 - 64%, maybe in the 65% range with an exceptional effort, especially among Jewish voters.)
2. Greater Tallahassee - He will win here by margins similar to 2004, with two notable exceptions. He will massacre John McCain in Gadsden, Florida's only black-majority county, but the population is so small (45,000) that this will not make a difference unless the election is exceptionally close. I also anticipate that Obama will flip Madison County; this county went for Bush in both 2000 and 2004 by the narrowest of margins - less than 1% in 2000 and less than 2% in 2004 - but went narrowly for Davis over Crist in the 2006 gubernatorial contest. It is over 40% black, and Obama will narrowly carry it; again, not a huge deal because it only has 20,000 residents. But this is Florida, and every vote counts.
3. Alachua and St. Lucie counties - Not much to say about these two rather unrelated counties; he'll win both and improve on Kerry's margins. Combined, both counties have a bit more than half a million residents, so not inconsequential.
4. Orange and Osceola counties - Orange County, home to Orlando, is one of these stereotypically 50-50 Florida counties. I think Obama must win Orange, and he must win it by more than 50-49; 53-46 would be great, but that will be hard to do. In addition, he must (and I believe he can) flip Orlando's southern suburbs in Osceola County. Osceola went for Gore in 2000 but switched to Bush in 2004; it has a very large Hispanic (esp. Puerto Rican) immigrant population and has been an extremely high-growth area, nearly tripling its population since 1990.
5. Pinellas County - Just like Orange, another schizophrenic I-4, 50%/50% county. It went for Gore in 2000 (narrowly) and Bush in 2004 (even more narrowly - by only 226 votes in a county with nearly a million residents!!!) Though Pinellas County was the point of origin for Republican politics in contemporary Florida, today it is a thoroughly moderate county with a mix of East Coast and Midwestern influences. I believe that Obama will win here, despite the lack of a sizable minority population, but margins are key; if he simply splits it 50/50, he will be in trouble. He must strive to push his margins out to 52 or 53 percent.
6. Volusia and Pasco counties - Two Central Florida counties on opposite ends of the state, I predict Obama will win in both, but the stories are different. Gore barely carried Pasco (northern Tampa suburbs) in 2000 but Bush won here in 2004 by a respectable 10 point margin; on the other hand, Volusia County (Daytona Beach) went for the Democrat in both elections, though by a much larger 8 percent margin in 2000 as opposed to 2 percent in 2004. He must hold his own in Pasco and at least split the vote - it has around 500,000 residents - while improving Kerry's margins in Volusia, which also has around 500,000 residents.
Leaving us with...
7. Hernando and Hillsborough counties - Colored pink on the map, these are the only two other places where I think Obama might conceivably come out ahead in the state. I have little hope for Hillsborough, home to Tampa; it does have a significant African American population, but it is socially conservative - it has the largest evangelical population of any of Florida's large cities outside of conservative Jacksonville - and it has been solidly Republican for at least the last 10 years. Obama could very well pull ahead in Hernando - it went for Gore in 2000 by a larger margin than neighboring Pasco, and Bush won it in 2004 by less than Pasco - but it is a bit more "country" than Pasco (think exurbs of Tampa), and has virtually no minority population. At best, I think Obama will split this county with McCain; what matters is that he not lose it decisively.
So in sum, how does Obama win Florida? Dominate the liberal and highly populated South, use these margins to mitigate the conservative but sparsely populated North, and improve on Kerry's disastrous performance in the moderate Middle.
With campaign analysis this good, I expect CNN to be calling me at any time to play with their little "magic map"...
Florida politics really isn't nearly as complicated as people make it out to be, at least on the statewide level. I can actually summarize the state politically in a few points:
1. We are not a Southern state in our culture, nor in our politics. I cannot state that emphatically enough. As you can probably tell, I detest the South and Southern culture and had I believed that Florida was a part of that world, I would have left upon graduating from high school. But of course, given our Confederate past there are some exceptions; in general, you will find significant Southern cultural elements in the rural counties in the Panhandle, around Jacksonville, and roughly north of Ocala - but even there, you'll find some notable exceptions (i.e., areas such as Flagler County and Gainesville, which while in the northern more conservative "Southern influenced" part of the state, are really not Southern in culture.) The only part of the state that is decidedly Southern is the Panhandle, but they represent a rather negligible percent of the population (around 7%.) As a comparison, liberal Palm Beach County, dominated by Northeastern migrants and the smallest of the 3 South Florida counties, comprises a slightly larger share of the state population than these dozens of rural counties.
If you need any proof of the political translation of our non-Southern culture, notice how social conservative Mike Huckabee, who appealed so strongly to Southerners, ran into a brick wall in Florida; he drew only 14% of our GOP vote as opposed to the 34% he won in Tennessee and Georgia and 41% in Alabama (he got 12% of the vote in California and 11% in New York state; which group of states is Florida closer to in this regard?? Hmmm....) I dare you to find a congressional district in one of those states that would elect someone with the politics of a Debbie Wasserman Schultz!
2. We are generally a state of moderates, but with occasional excesses of right-wing Republicanism. Regardless of those conservative excesses (which I apologize for), politicians like Bill Nelson and Charlie Crist are more indicative of Florida politics than ideologues like Jeb Bush and Mel Martinez (Martinez, for the record, only so barely eked out a victory in 2004, largely by riding the coattails of Dubya and getting many Hispanics in Dade County to vote along ethnic lines, even though they may have disagreed with his politics - even so, he split highly Hispanic Dade 50/50 with Betty Castor.)
3. You're going to hear the press make a big fuss about how Democrats have a 600,000+ advantage in voter registration. Floridians know to ignore such statistics. First, the larger than typical number of NPA (non-party affiliated) voters in the state means that any close competition will be decided by independents, not party loyalists. Secondly, a sizeable number of Florida Democrats - and this principally applies to wags in the Panhandle and Northern counties - are effectively modern-day Dixiecrats. They've been on the rolls as Democrats their entire lives, but they are so conservative that nobody would ever confuse them for a Democrat a la Hillary Clinton. It goes without saying that McCain will be getting their votes, just as Bush did in 2004 and 2000.
4. Florida has two decidedly conservative areas: the more Southern in culture Panhandle + Northeast (centered around Jacksonville) + areas in North Central Florida outside of Gainesville (let's call this block of territory "North Florida"), and Southwestern coast south of Tampa Bay, including the inland agricultural counties of the Heartland ("Southwest Florida.") Southwest Florida is where you will find some of the largest concentrations of old people, mostly retiree migrants, in the country, and it has been a remarkably high growth area over the last 10 years (I'm ignorning the Heartland in this analysis; it is sparsely populated and solidly Republican.) It is a conservative area, but it is not the same type of fiery, reactionary Southern-oriented conservatism that you will find in North Florida. The state's liberal Democratic bastion is South Florida, the state's three most populous counties on the Southeast coast and where I call home - Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Monroe County, home to the Keys, is not as consistent in its voting as its three mainland neighbors but is fairly liberal in culture nonetheless (ever walk down Duval Street on a Saturday night?) That leaves the vast central area of the state - home to the large cities of Orlando and Tampa Bay - as a rather fickle swing area. This is the infamous "I-4 swing corridor", and in a close election it is almost always this part of the state that will determine the victor.
So really, the calculus for Obama to win Florida is remarkably simple: run up the margins in liberal South Florida, home to a third of the state's population, use those impressive margins to nullify certain Republican victories in conservative North and Southwest Florida, and then marginally outperform McCain in the I-4 swing region.
Simple. Really. Except that winning in Central Florida has eluded Democrats in the manner that sex eludes Carnegie Mellon undergrads (hey, I couldn't resist that one! Forgive me... : - D )
In fact, Obama has two additional things to worry about: Florida has never voted for a truly liberal Presidential candidate, and Florida has never elected an African American to a significant statewide office. Obama, alas, is a truly liberal African American. Do the math.
Here's what a potential Obama victory in Florida would look like graphically (and I do love my election maps!):
I'm going to refer to the counties by name in this analysis; if you don't know Florida counties by heart, this map might be helpful.
The red counties are the ones that I see no possible way of Obama winning. Out of the question, but he does not need them to win. So instead, I'll look at the blue counties and my two "pink" counties on the map:
1. Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade - Obama winning here, in liberal, diverse, urbanized South Florida, is not a question; margins, margins, margins are what matters. He needs to push the Miami-Dade margin to as close to 60% as possible (I estimate he will win in Dade with 55 - 58% of the vote), keep Broward in the very high 60's (probably 65 - 69%, but could even exceed 70% with a great turnout effort - this is Florida's liberal stronghold, after all), and push Palm Beach to the mid-60's (likely will be 60 - 64%, maybe in the 65% range with an exceptional effort, especially among Jewish voters.)
2. Greater Tallahassee - He will win here by margins similar to 2004, with two notable exceptions. He will massacre John McCain in Gadsden, Florida's only black-majority county, but the population is so small (45,000) that this will not make a difference unless the election is exceptionally close. I also anticipate that Obama will flip Madison County; this county went for Bush in both 2000 and 2004 by the narrowest of margins - less than 1% in 2000 and less than 2% in 2004 - but went narrowly for Davis over Crist in the 2006 gubernatorial contest. It is over 40% black, and Obama will narrowly carry it; again, not a huge deal because it only has 20,000 residents. But this is Florida, and every vote counts.
3. Alachua and St. Lucie counties - Not much to say about these two rather unrelated counties; he'll win both and improve on Kerry's margins. Combined, both counties have a bit more than half a million residents, so not inconsequential.
4. Orange and Osceola counties - Orange County, home to Orlando, is one of these stereotypically 50-50 Florida counties. I think Obama must win Orange, and he must win it by more than 50-49; 53-46 would be great, but that will be hard to do. In addition, he must (and I believe he can) flip Orlando's southern suburbs in Osceola County. Osceola went for Gore in 2000 but switched to Bush in 2004; it has a very large Hispanic (esp. Puerto Rican) immigrant population and has been an extremely high-growth area, nearly tripling its population since 1990.
5. Pinellas County - Just like Orange, another schizophrenic I-4, 50%/50% county. It went for Gore in 2000 (narrowly) and Bush in 2004 (even more narrowly - by only 226 votes in a county with nearly a million residents!!!) Though Pinellas County was the point of origin for Republican politics in contemporary Florida, today it is a thoroughly moderate county with a mix of East Coast and Midwestern influences. I believe that Obama will win here, despite the lack of a sizable minority population, but margins are key; if he simply splits it 50/50, he will be in trouble. He must strive to push his margins out to 52 or 53 percent.
6. Volusia and Pasco counties - Two Central Florida counties on opposite ends of the state, I predict Obama will win in both, but the stories are different. Gore barely carried Pasco (northern Tampa suburbs) in 2000 but Bush won here in 2004 by a respectable 10 point margin; on the other hand, Volusia County (Daytona Beach) went for the Democrat in both elections, though by a much larger 8 percent margin in 2000 as opposed to 2 percent in 2004. He must hold his own in Pasco and at least split the vote - it has around 500,000 residents - while improving Kerry's margins in Volusia, which also has around 500,000 residents.
Leaving us with...
7. Hernando and Hillsborough counties - Colored pink on the map, these are the only two other places where I think Obama might conceivably come out ahead in the state. I have little hope for Hillsborough, home to Tampa; it does have a significant African American population, but it is socially conservative - it has the largest evangelical population of any of Florida's large cities outside of conservative Jacksonville - and it has been solidly Republican for at least the last 10 years. Obama could very well pull ahead in Hernando - it went for Gore in 2000 by a larger margin than neighboring Pasco, and Bush won it in 2004 by less than Pasco - but it is a bit more "country" than Pasco (think exurbs of Tampa), and has virtually no minority population. At best, I think Obama will split this county with McCain; what matters is that he not lose it decisively.
So in sum, how does Obama win Florida? Dominate the liberal and highly populated South, use these margins to mitigate the conservative but sparsely populated North, and improve on Kerry's disastrous performance in the moderate Middle.
With campaign analysis this good, I expect CNN to be calling me at any time to play with their little "magic map"...
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