Here we are.

To:        To everyone who doesn't work in the Jaguars front office

From:    Lilly and Shadow's human

Date:     53 days left in the Christmas shopping season

Re:        The 2020 politics of the state that actually brought you Thanksgiving

It has been a long ride.  557 days ago, Joe Biden launched his bid for President.  369 days ago, I was part of a team that launched Unite the Country, a SuperPAC to support Joe Biden's bid for President.  And it has been 50 days since the Jacksonville Jaguars won a football game - and it may be well into the next administration before we see them win again.

Honestly, when Joe Biden decided not to run in 2015, I figured my days doing this stuff were over, and between the us, that was OK.  I had a good run.  

Then Trump won.  Then the boss started talking about it.  Then Charlottesville, and everything changed.  The early primaries - the night of Nevada when I felt we were going to be the nominee -- South Carolina, Covid...and now, well, here we are one day out.  I am tired (no human should do three presidentials), anxious, and ready to get through tomorrow.  

Before we get into Florida, I want to take a second and just walk through the map.   For Biden, winning the Clinton states gets him to a base of 232.  The fastest way to 270 is this:  Wisconsin (10 - 242), Michigan (16 - 258), and Pennsylvania (20-278).  If that happens tomorrow, nothing else will matter.  For Trump, getting to 270 starts with winning, what we will say for these purposes, are the Romney states + Ohio, Iowa, ME 2, and FL.  That gets him to 260 - and then has to win one of those upper midwest/rustbelt states to win. 

If Trump doesn't win Florida - he has to win all three of those states to win -- or he has to find wins in one of the Clinton states, all of which are well positioned for Biden wins.

In other words, if he wins Florida, the map gives him a chance to win Pennsylvania and get re-elected.  If he doesn't win Florida, it is over.  As President Obama said the other day in Miami, if Biden wins, we can all go to bed early.

For all the frustration about Florida that exists, particularly over on the ole hellsite dot com, that is the reason to play here for Democrats.  They have to win here.  Best case scenario, a win gives an early in the night fast pass to Casa Blanca, but worse case, you force the Republicans to bog down here to get a win - or as I used to tell our organizers on Obama, our job was to run the ball, keep getting first downs, and wear down the defense. Never let them off the field.  My team doesn't have to win - but my team should want to win. Win here, and you end it.

And going in to tomorrow, they have every shot to win here.

So here we are.

Nearly 9 million ballots cast, and with VBMs that come in today, we will almost assuredly enter Election Day over 9 million ballots cast.   Total turnout is over 62%.  For comparison sake, 51% of registered voters voted before Election Day, and total turnout was 75% in 2016 -- and that was a good year for turnout.   A big day tomorrow might lead to an election with 12 million total votes, which would put total turnout at 83%, tying the 1992 election as the highest voter turnout in the modern era of voting. Basically any way you look at it, at least 75%, and probably closer to 80% of the likely electorate has voted. 

Not surprisingly, partisans are voting at even higher rates. So far, roughly 2 out of every 3 registered Florida Democratic and Republican voter has voted.  Honestly, there aren't that many more people left to vote.  In terms of actual voters - I suspect Democrats will go into Election Day (including today VBM) with a lead somewhere between 110-115K voters.  Republicans have about 150K more high propensity voters than do the Democrats left to vote (voters who voted in the midterm in 2018 and/or the 2016 Presidential).  Democrats have 150K or more low propensity voters to vote.  Where all that lands tomorrow is the difference between winning and losing.

Some big picture stuff:  Of the 9 million pre-Eday voters, nearly 52% of the votes were cast by mail - and Dems have an edge of almost 664K.   Early voting made up just over 48%, and Republicans have the edge here by about 556K.   

The early voting electorate, by registration, is 63.7% white, 16.3% Hispanic, and 12.7% Black.   The Hispanic and Black numbers trail their registration shares by a little.

As for the nearly 2.1 million voters who have no party, or minor party affiliation, they break out: 58% white, 22% Hispanic, and 7.5% Black.   This cohort also has more voters under 29 than the electorate at large.

One thing before we go on - much has been debated about the Latino vote, where Trump has worked very hard to make inroads.  The reality is Biden doesn't need Clinton numbers in these communities - if he is getting the kind of support from suburban whites and white seniors.  I do think if Biden is above 40% with whites, he is likely to win Florida, notwithstanding any gains Trump makes with Latinos.

While I think it is hard to compare this electorate to the last one, for benchmark purposes, Florida had about 6.6 million early voters in 2016 - which ended up being 68-69% of all voters.  Compared to 62% of all Florida registered voters voting early this year - in 2016, the percentage of all registered who voted early was about 51%.   In other words - this election is far more cooked than the last one.  How does that matter?  Well, we have to play the. game to see.

Before we get into this election, let's review how Trump won last time -- and how that differed from Obama in 2012.

First, lets' think of Florida on macro-scale.  For that, I tend to break the state down by media markets.  

Obama won Florida in 2012 by roughly 74,000 votes, and Trump won it by about 113,000.  In other words, there was roughly 187,000 vote change in the margin from Obama to Trump.   

There are 10 media markets in Florida, eight of we can categorize as base markets for one of the two parties.  Democrats typically win four pretty easily (Tallahassee, Gainesville, West Palm and Miami), while Republicans typically carry with ease (Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers).  For all the buzz around Trump running up the score in his base -- and Clinton struggling with turnout, what is interesting -- if you compare the 2016 performance in these markets with the 2012 performance - you see almost identical numbers.  Clinton won her markets by 79,000 more votes than Obama – and Trump won his by 76,000 more than Romney.  In other words, relative to 2012, the base markets were a push.

As stated above, in 8 of the state’s 10 media markets, the Clinton/Trump election was pretty much the Obama/Romney election.  Clinton ran the score up in her counties, and Trump jacked up his numbers, particularly in the Fort Myers market, but the final result in these places was almost identical to 2012 -- which leaves us Orlando and Tampa.

n 2012, President Obama lost the two media markets by a combined 56,575 votes – and four years later, Secretary Clinton lost the same two media markets by 247,118 – a total shift of 190K votes.   

But what is remarkable is how Trump ran up the score in these markets, given that Secretary Clinton won the urban Orlando counties (Seminole, Orange and Osceola) by almost 70,000 more votes than Obama.  

In 14 counties within the I-4 markets, Trump set the modern era Republican Presidential percentage margin of victory, and in 15, he set the record for largest raw vote margin of victory – in virtually every case, breaking the numbers set by Bush in 04, in a year when he won by five points.  In fact, statewide, Trump’s percentage share margin was better than Bush’s 04 margins in 48 counties, and his raw vote margins were better in 55.   If Bush had seen Trump like numbers in those counties, he would have won Florida by 8-9 points.

But it is important to keep this in mind -  he set records all over the state, and yet only won by a point.  This shows how structurally stable is - that as I joked to a reporter early in the week, you could put "going in a tropical vacation" and "stubbing your toe on the couch" and both would get to about 47 as a baseline.   The idea that anyone thought Florida wouldn't be completely in play was kind of nuts.  It is very much in play.  

No two elections are ever identical - and given an election where 2 to 2.5 million more people will vote than 2016, this is no exception.  The other thing about this election - it will be more diverse.  In other words, just the basic math of the Trump win - if nothing changed but the ethnic and racial make-up of the electorate - would look closer than four years ago, simply because whites will make up a smaller share of the electorate.  For folks who talk about 2016 polling misses, remember in 2012 when most of the polls thought Romney had it locked up -- they missed the growing diversity of the state.  The polling miss in Florida was bigger in 2012 for Obama than it was for Trump in 2016.   

That being said, there are markers to a win.   Because this is my blog, and Biden is my guy, I will look at it from that lens.   Obviously - Biden will want the biggest margins possible in the base counties - and given Clinton's win in Dade was without precedent, it is likely we will need larger margins in places like Palm Beach, Orange or Broward County to make it up.  I think all are quite possible.  A win will also include a larger win in Hillsborough (was +6.9 last time) - winning three to four Trump counties:  Pinellas, Duval (Bluuuuuval), which hasn't happened since 1976, winning Seminole (not sure that has ever happened), and probably winning St. Lucie.  

I suspect a win also includes doing marginally better in a few really GOP counties that have higher than average population of college + voters:  Collier, and St. Johns come to mind.   Trump is going to win by huge numbers in both -- but can Biden cut those margins a point or two?  

In addition, a win is going to have better Democratic margins - closer to 2012 in places like Sarasota, and Polk in the Tampa media market.  A win is also going to mean marginal improvements in a whole bunch of places that went really south in 2016:  Volusia (Daytona), and Pasco (north of Tampa).    Finally, a win will have North Florida look like it did four and eight years ago.  Give me anything inside of 19-20 points in the five markets stretching from JAX to Pensacola and I will feel pretty decent.

So here are some things I am going to watch for tomorrow.

First - the "swing counties."  There were four:  Jefferson (rural North Florida), Monroe (The Conch Republic), St. Lucie (Palm Beach media market), Pinellas (St. Petersburg/Clearwater).  Beyond this, there are two counties that I suspect will flip if Biden wins:  Duval (Jacksonville), and Seminole (suburban Orlando).    I will likely go look at Pinellas and Duval first - mostly because they both have a history of returning VBM/EV pretty quickly.  

Next:  the "base counties" - I want to see how Dade is doing.  I don't expect Biden to hit Clinton levels, but I would like to see him hit margins around Obama 2012.  I also want to see Broward next door.  I think there is a decent chance Broward hits margins enough to make up any loss from Clinton in Dade.   Palm Beach is usually slow to report - but they have changed some things up, so hopefully we will get an early read there. 

"Red Florida" - Sumter County is hard core red - it is home to the Villages.  Trump won it by 39 points in 2016.  Almost all of its vote will report early - so I will be curious as to the margins.  Same for Pasco, a bay area county that Trump won by 53K votes in 2016 and returns results very quickly.   Do the margins look the same, or do they look different.  Volusia on the east coast is similar - it moved hard from Obama to Trump -- can Biden claw some of that back.

Sarasota is sometimes fast, sometimes slow in returns.  I want to see it before making any judgements.   Then what is the lead in the eastern time zone before the central time zone votes come in?  Trump should win those central time zone votes by a max of 150,000 votes -- so are we up by enough to absorb that around 8pm?  

Last time, we had a pretty good read on it before 8pm.  I don't know how that changes with so many more votes - but I suspect we will know pretty early in the night.

Basically it comes down to two things:  Can Democrats somewhat keep up with turnout tomorrow -- and are the NPA and partisan votes breaking as the polls suggest they are (Biden winning NPA, and winning a bigger share of GOP than Trump is of Dem)?  If the NPA/partisan breaks hold, Biden can very much win without a partisan lead.  How much?  Well that depends?

For example, if the GOP has a one point advantage among all registered voters, under a model where both candidates get the same percentage of their own partisan vote (let's say 90-10), Biden would need a 5 point NPA lead to win by something close to the recount margin.  But let's say Biden win's 11% of Republicans (89-11) compared to Trump getting 10% of Democrats (90-10), Biden will win by almost a point.   As the GOP partisan advantage grows in turnout - these margins go up as well.   That is why - in my super high-tech hack analysis, well, it comes down to turnout tomorrow.

I'll close with this.  This is a hard race for me to analyze.  I am too close to it.  While I always want my team to win, I have been emotionally invested in this for several years now.   That is why in the above, I am not trying to draw conclusions - and merely laying it out.   Also tomorrow, I may not be super active in real time on twitter - I have a lot of states to watch - as my PAC has been running TV and digital content over the last three weeks in 8 states.

I don't know how much longer I will do these things.  This has been a long cycle.  I definitely feel like it is time to go open a bar on the island of Borneo.  We'll see.  I'll likely do some kind of a recap in a few weeks. I also might throw my phone in the St. Marks River, build a lean-to in the Everglades, and open a python rescue - I do have mutual friends on Facebook with Carole Baskin after all, because well, Florida.

Truly at this point, really anything is possible.

Until then, as noted Florida Man Jim Morrison once said "this is the end, my only friend. The end."   

Thanks to all for reading - and Will, we are going to try to win this for your dad.

PS - As the subject said - Florida is the reason you all have Thanksgiving.  We had it first - some 100 years before it was a thing in the NE.  Oh - and they had alligator.  Remember that when you do your Thanksgiving shopping this year