In Modern Florida, Amendment 2 defeated and stronger Obama victory

Focus on Florida

Since I don't anticipate much time to blog tomorrow, I'm going to do my weekly Florida post a day early. Back to blogging on Tuesday.

Florida is and has long been two fundamentally different states tenuously glued together by artificial geopolitical boundaries that have long since been rendered culturally obsolete. In one of those Florida's, a larger than statewide majority voted for Obama and anti-gay Amendment 2 failed to reach the required 60% by a razor thin margin; in the other Florida, residents went overwhelmingly for McCain and supported Amendment 2 by enormous margins. In one of those Florida's, people trace their ancestry back through the state for generations and largely live in small isolated towns; in the other Florida, people like me have well under one full generation of contact with the state and live in larger cities and sprawling suburbs. In one of those Florida's, people sound like the residents of Mississippi and voted resoundingly for segregationist George Wallace in 1968; the other Florida has a range of accents, from my genre of neutral Midwestern to the Brooklynese of a Pompano Beach retiree to the rich Cuban Spanish of abuelitas chatting on Calle Ocho, and is composed of residents who are overwhelmingly foreign to the religion and race-driven politics of Dixie. One of those Florida's is concentrated on the coasts and contains 80% of the state's population; the other is rural, inland, agrarian, and sparsely populated. I've lived on both sides of the cultural barrier and know that it is real; in fact, nearly two years ago I wrote extensively about the cultural chasm in our state in my article A Measure of Change (which you can access and read, if you'd like, by clicking here.) I plan on greatly revising and expanding that work at some point this summer and (hopefully!) getting it published, but I still agree with how I drew the "cultural fault line" 2 years ago. The map, from my Measure of Change article, is above for reference. While I'll leave the gory details of Floridian demographics and how I precisely divided the regions for you to read in the full article if you'd like, it suffices to say that Jacksonville and most of North Central Florida/the Panhandle form a region that shares an identity with the Deep South (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina), but not with what one considers typical "Florida culture" of the post-WWII era (i.e., it is not the Florida to which your grandparents from New Jersey retired.) This region is referred to as "Old Florida" because it represents how the entire state of Florida looked prior to the second World War. The peninsula south of Ocala, containing over 80% of the state's population and cities such as Orlando, Tampa, and Miami, is the typical Florida that almost all people think of when they consider our state; big cities, diverse, rapid population growth. This is "Modern Florida." Areas such as Gainesville, Ocala, and St. Augustine sit in a sort of buffer zone and are a cultural blend of the two regions, though they have more in common with the counties to their south in Modern Florida- this is "Transitional Florida" (though as far as Transitional Florida goes, I think that the one change I might make to my map this summer is grouping Flagler County in wholly with Modern Florida; 20 years ago this county was just as rural and Southern as anything in the Panhandle, but it has seen such a phenomenal growth rate that its demographics are now virtually indistinguishable from Modern Florida counties such as Martin and Indian River.)

I knew that one of the first things I wanted to do after the election was analyze how the two different Florida's voted. As I have done in the past, I have grouped the counties of hybrid Transitional Florida - counties that are rapidly losing what little they have left of their traditional Southern identity - in with the counties of Modern Florida. Here is what this analysis reveals, first for Modern and Transitional Florida:

Modern Florida - Election 2008 Analysis
Amendment 2
County	For	Against
Alachua	60,508	57,749
Brevard	177,438	102,226
Broward	336,536	309,801
Charlotte	54,155	28,523
Citrus	50,307	23,918
Collier	80,727	48,057
DeSoto	7,465	2,239
Flagler	29,749	17,185
Glades	3,267	860
Hardee	6,038	1,120
Hendry	7,875	2,080
Hernando	28,993	14,263
Highlands	32,632	9,943
Hillsborough	248,845	166,148
Indian River	42,876	22,484
Lake	98,339	42,533
Lee	162,206	88,685
Manatee	88,469	54,921
Marion	110,139	46,450
Martin	47,275	27,483
Miami-Dade	436,310	319,961
Monroe	18,397	19,965
Okeechobee	9,546	2,874
Orange	259,196	171,124
Osceola	61,697	29,256
Palm Beach	257,993	242,099
Pasco	129,150	79,135
Pinellas	238,076	200,419
Polk	170,900	65,909
Sarasota	113,050	86,628
Seminole	119,694	78,564
St. Johns	65,902	35,442
St. Lucie	72,129	39,466
Sumter	34,559	12,501
Volusia	141,090	89,467
TOTAL	3,801,528	2,539,478
PERCENT	59.95%	40.05%
Presidential election
County	Obama	McCain
Alachua	73,134	47,025
Brevard	127,400	157,402
Broward	487,638	234,690
Charlotte	39,006	45,180
Citrus	31,428	43,666
Collier	52,710	82,238
DeSoto	4,378	5,625
Flagler	24,682	23,931
Glades	1,674	2,533
Hardee	2,561	4,758
Hendry	4,998	5,779
Hernando	18,980	25,220
Highlands	17,913	25,903
Hillsborough	219,580	209,503
Indian River	29,565	39,972
Lake	62,710	82,512
Lee	117,878	145,624
Manatee	67,785	78,040
Marion	70,771	89,571
Martin	33,474	44,110
Miami-Dade	491,195	351,462
Monroe	20,868	18,906
Okeechobee	5,102	7,551
Orange	271,866	186,079
Osceola	59,081	39,489
Palm Beach	342,527	211,163
Pasco	102,217	109,902
Pinellas	243,994	206,909
Polk	113,552	128,658
Sarasota	102,413	102,650
Seminole	99,140	104,885
St. Johns	35,578	68,800
St. Lucie	66,830	52,323
Sumter	17,644	30,859
Volusia	127,474	113,716
TOTAL	3,587,746	3,126,634
PERCENT	53.43%	46.57%

Consider the significance of this. Constitutional amendments in Florida require 60% of the vote to pass - 40% + 1 vote will kill them - and anti-gay Amendment 2 passed statewide by 62%. But in the peninsular counties of Modern Florida, the amendment was ever so narrowly defeated, gaining only 59.95% of the vote. Meanwhile, while Obama won statewide by a narrow 2 point margin (51-49), he handily defeated McCain in Modern Florida by 7 percentage points.

Now, let's turn our attention to Old Florida:

Old Florida - Election 2008 Analysis
Amendment 2
County	For	Against
Baker	9,393	1,447
Bay	59,105	19,783
Bradford	9,455	1,998
Calhoun	5,002	961
Clay	67,900	22,815
Columbia	20,624	6,797
Dixie	5,873	1,135
Duval	256,077	177,732
Escambia	108,100	40,091
Franklin	4,158	1,597
Gadsden	15,565	5,348
Gilchrist	6,278	1,406
Gulf	5,655	1,327
Hamilton	4,363	838
Holmes	7,429	880
Jackson	17,472	3,248
Jefferson	5,488	1,955
Lafayette	2,906	381
Leon	78,428	63,824
Levy	13,853	4,240
Liberty	2,599	538
Madison	7,167	1,365
Nassau	28,147	9,190
Okaloosa	68,687	2,305
Putnam	24,330	7,763
Santa Rosa	55,911	17,766
Suwannee	13,442	2,594
Taylor	7,720	1,359
Union	4,458	701
Wakulla	9,930	4,076
Walton	19,608	6,475
Washington	9,138	1,547
TOTAL	954,261	413,482
PERCENT	69.77%	30.23%
Presidential election
County	Obama	McCain
Baker	2,326	8,672
Bay	23,603	56,597
Bradford	3,430	8,135
Calhoun	1,821	4,344
Clay	26,635	66,847
Columbia	9,171	18,668
Dixie	1,921	5,188
Duval	192,173	197,171
Escambia	61,152	90,826
Franklin	2,122	3,799
Gadsden	15,566	6,805
Gilchrist	1,993	5,654
Gulf	2,144	4,971
Hamilton	2,360	3,179
Holmes	1,443	7,023
Jackson	7,632	13,695
Jefferson	4,082	3,794
Lafayette	640	2,677
Leon	91,356	55,521
Levy	6,707	11,751
Liberty	892	2,337
Madison	4,270	4,544
Nassau	10,577	27,326
Okaloosa	25,623	68,181
Putnam	13,201	19,586
Santa Rosa	19,394	55,843
Suwannee	4,572	11,672
Taylor	2,787	6,446
Union	1,299	3,933
Wakulla	5,303	8,869
Walton	7,158	19,527
Washington	2,858	8,165
TOTAL	556,211	811,746
PERCENT	40.66%	59.34%

Notice how the election results in this part of the state are exactly the opposite of what occurred in peninsular Modern Florida. Here, Amendment 2 passed with an overwhelming majority - nearly 70%. Here, McCain won by a nearly 19 percentage point margin - larger than his margin of victory in Mississippi.

There's an old saying that any person who studies Florida has heard many times: "In Florida, to reach the South, you have to go north." I think you get the point by now.

This divide has many different implications, and they are rather significant on the policy side. In particular, gay Floridians can fully expect right-wing evangelical Christians in Old Florida to stand firmly against equality measures, just as they firmly stood against racial integration and the Civil Rights Movement 40 years ago. Remember that while South Florida was fully ready to push through a civil rights agenda in the 1960's, conservative Dixiecrat politicians in Old Florida aggressively fought LeRoy Collin's civil rights agenda and successfully blocked efforts to redistrict the state, which would have effectively ended their hegemony over state politics. If gay Floridians think that conservatives in the Panhandle and North Florida are going to do anything less now in an attempt to block our civil rights agenda, they had best have a swift reality check.

However, we cannot solely target our efforts at bringing about change in Old Florida. When 59.95% of Floridians in the Modern Florida peninsula reject equality, we are simply left with no time to celebrate, even if this result may be ever so slightly less than the barrier needed to amend the state Constitution. We must particularly challenge racial and ethnic minority constituencies in this part of the state, who voted for the measure by larger numbers than whites. In my LGBT(IQ) post on Thursday, I will discuss the special responsibility that gays in minority groups - especially gay African Americans such as myself - have to tirelessly combat homophobia inside of our own race.

These challenges and struggles will present many uncertainties, but I know one thing beyond doubt - the right-wing fundamentalist Christians in North Florida, as much as they would love nothing more than to see a Florida devoid of LGBT citizens, will never force me out of my home state. And I can but hope that other gay Floridians are united and share the same attitude. After all, we are now officially a blue state - so on second thought, maybe this is a time for celebration after all. :-)