Pull up a chair friends, and it is time for a little chat about your favorite state – the place that is, as Congressman Charlie Crist often remarks, the prettiest state with the prettiest name. That of course is La Florida.
So, what is it?
Almost 22 million residents -- and of the most diverse places anywhere.
World’s 17th largest economy - home to the wealthiest zipcode in America, and several of the poorest.
10 media markets - including 3 of the top 18 in America.
Florida Man. Florida Woman. Florida Man’s pet alligator. Florida Man taking pet alligator into a gas station to buy beer.
10 counties with a population larger than Wyoming.
Deer eating pythons in the Everglades. Herpes monkeys. Brain eating amoeba.
Frozen iguanas injuring people as they fall from trees.
7 statewide elections since 2010 that were decided by less than 1.2%.
Over 51 million votes cast for President since 1992. Less than 20,000 separate Republicans and Democrats.
Florida.
The thing to remember about Florida – we aren’t really a state. Most Americans live in a place where community or state at some level equals common experience. We are nearly 22 million people – most whose lives did not begin here – and a full 20% whose lives didn’t even begin in the United States of America – tethered together by a boundary and a dream – a dream made possible thanks to air conditioning, mosquito control, air travel, and interstate highways. While that dream may be different for each individual person, it is almost always a dream that carries people here.
As I said in a piece I wrote last year about Florida Man, we are a frontier – a frontier that continues to draw people here, in search of better weather, jobs, and in the case of many immigrants, the start of an American Dream. In many ways, as I often say when I give speeches about Florida: we are the modern-day Ellis Island of a nation whose more recent immigrant growth orients more south than east.
1924 was the last time Republicans went to the White House without winning Florida. Since that time, the population of the United States has nearly tripled, but the population of Florida has grown by nearly 19x. And every one of those migrants has brought an experience – an experience from somewhere other than here – but it is the collection of those experiences that explains this place, that make Florida well, Florida.
This piece is the 2020 version of a piece I wrote in 2016: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about Florida but were afraid to ask. It is too long, but in the same breath, when I finally hit publish, I will spend the next week thinking of all the things I forgot to say. Also, some of this will be a little repetitive from the 2016 version, because for as much as Florida changes, we are a fairly stable state – at least politically.
I used to think and say that Florida was a microcosm, I have learned this isn’t accurate. Rather, we are reflective of the politics and the culture of the places where people come from. The goal of this is to peel back a little of the onion to give some context to the places you will hear a lot about over the next 60 days as America, and Florida, choose a President.
One note – over time, I have come to think about Florida in terms of media markets, so my regional breaks are inclusive of entire media markets. Truthfully, you can slice this place up a lot of different ways. For example, one can argue people who live on the coastal side of the interstates have more in common with each other than they do people who live inland of the interstates – even when those people live in the same county. In my own perfect world, I’d break the state up lots of different ways, because I don’t think the media markets do a good job. That being said, since campaigns think about elections – or at least paid media through this lens, so will this piece. So, this breaks Florida up into semi-autonomous commonwealths, connected by interstate highways, and tied together by a border – and not much else.
Pull up a beach chair, and let’s go.
THE WAFFLE HOUSE CORRIDOR
There is an old saying in Florida that in order to go south, you go north, and in many ways, the axiom holds true today.
For the sake of this piece, we will define North Florida has the media markets along I-10: Pensacola, Panama City, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, with the addition of Gainesville – which while not touching I-10, is definitely regionally more North Florida than anything else. The region makes up between 18-19% of the statewide vote, and in 2020, will have roughly the same number of votes as Kentucky. It is also demographically more consistent than the rest of Florida – about 72% white among registered voters, and 17% Black, and unlike other areas, neither number has changed much in the last eight years.
It is also worth nothing that I-10 connects two of the communities: Pensacola and Jacksonville, both home to some of the highest Waffle House concentrations per capita. God's country that is.
If you were to drive from west to east, it wouldn’t look too different. The Pensacola area has a strong military presence – and is safely Republican. This is Matt Gaetz country, and Republican margin of victory is fairly predictable here – somewhere between 115-130K votes. As you move east, you start getting into the ole “Redneck Riviera” – which today, is a significant stretch of Florida coastline that is upscale vacation-type properties along the coast – often with more in common with similar coastal areas around the state than the very rural areas just to the north from the coast. Panama City, like Pensacola, has a strong military presence – then as you move further east, you get into the “Forgotten Coast” – a long stretch of coastline that stretches around the Big Bend of Florida where much of the coastline lacks a traditional beach. Again, the question isn’t whether Republicans win these counties, but by how much.
Further inland, the region feels very southern. Small towns, with town squares, many still with confederate monuments, and communities that feel quite segregated. Tallahassee is like a lot of southern university/capital cities: more liberal and younger than its surroundings. Tallahassee is also home to three universities, including the largest HBCU in the state (and third largest in the nation): Florida A&M University. The town is also home to the reigning ACC Men’s basketball champions, which also – and this is key for political purposes – is the holder of the #1 men’s basketball recruiting class in 2021. Just north of Tallahassee is Gadsden County, the county with the highest percentage of African American residents in Florida. As you move from west to east, these are the first counties in the state that will go Democratic.
Not much changes as you move east down I-10 through the small towns of Madison, Live Oak (home to the nation’s #1 truck stop, the Busy Bee), Lake City and Macclenny, as the interstate exits lead to north/south rural roads that lead to more southern towns. To the south of here is Gainesville, home to East Florida Seminary. Like Tallahassee, it is younger and more liberal than its surroundings, a somewhat traditional southern college town. Much of this region is agriculture and speed traps, though this is also an area where prisons provide a lot of employment. When people talk about the places prosperity left behind, they are talking about here.
Then we get to Jacksonville, home of America’s favorite NFL franchise, one that like the community itself, has struggled to get respect. Jacksonville itself is the 12th largest city in the nation by population, and itself, is trending a little Democratic. It would not be a surprise to see Biden carry Duval County (pronounced with a long 'u' - sometimes a really long ;u;). The communities around Jacksonville are as a Republican as any place in Florida, and a Trump win will mean running up record margins in places like St. Johns County and Clay County. If you are interested in the region, you can learn more by reading my piece DUUUUUUVAL.
First, there are a lot of misunderstandings about 2016 in Florida (and everywhere), but one of them is Trump won because of overwhelming support in North Florida. This tends to be a common theme for one, unbelievably lazy reason: many pundits forget that roughly 10 counties in Florida are in the Central Time Zone, meaning they report an hour after the polls close in most of the state. Since Florida reports its vote by mail and in-person early returns almost immediately upon polls closing, this leads to an effect where around 8:05 EST, there is a big wave of Republican votes.
But the truth is, Trump didn’t do significantly better than Romney, or even McCain. Trump won North Florida by 20%, besting Romney’s 19% margin. I honestly don’t know how much more room there is to grow for Trump. There are a number of counties where he will earn north of 75% of the vote, but most of these are small. The larger metro areas are more stable – though he could benefit from growth in the wealthier coastal areas. One note about the region: nearly a quarter of all registered Black voters (predominantly African American in this region) live in North Florida, a fact often forgotten by campaigns that focus on outreach in urban communities.
TAMPA and SW Florida
As we continue our tour of Florida, we head southwest to the Tampa and Fort Myers media markets, and while the two markets are different in some respects, they are also more aligned than not – and certainly the Fort Myers DMA is culturally more centered with residents from Tampa than they are with their fellow Floridians on the east coast (many pollsters will lump Fort Myers into ‘south florida’). Combined, these two media markets will likely have more votes than either Minnesota, or Wisconsin – two critical swing states this cycle.
This region is massive – the northern most county, Citrus County, isn’t touched by I-75, but as you as drive south, you essentially entire the Tampa media market right around the Big Daddy Don Gartlis Drag Racing Museum – and for the record, I am not making a cultural reference here to make fun of people who like drag racing – I grew up loving drag racing. From there, you can drive 240 miles south until I-75 hangs a left into The Everglades – and from there, you can still drive 45 minutes south on local roads until you run out of land. In total, 30% of the state lives here, and while it is the region of the state with the largest share of white voters, the percentage of non-white voters has grown from 21% to 26% since 2012.
If there is a defining feature of the area, it is the most ‘midwestern’ of all the regions, in part because people who moved here tended to move from along the I-75 corridor. When I was growing up just south of Chicago, it seemed like every other person had a grandmother or aunt who lived in Tarpon Springs, or Sarasota, or Port Charlotte – and in fact when my family first looked at moving south, it was the west coast of Florida that seemed like the obvious choice. If you need to see it for yourself, go to a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game when they play the Bears, or when the Rays play someone like the Brewers or Detroit Tigers – you won’t always know the home team.
Because of this more midwestern orientation, the region tends to have more swing vote – particularly in the Tampa market itself. In fact, if you look at the similarities between Bush 04 and Trump 16, both cruised in the Tampa market, while Obama actually won the Tampa media market in 08 and kept it respectable in 12. Had Clinton maintained Obama’s 2012 margins in Tampa, she would have won Florida – but the good news for Democrats – the market did swing heavily towards Democrats in 2008 from Bush, showing nothing is permanent here.
In fact, it isn’t ridiculous to think that the three Tampa DMA counties north of the City of Tampa: Citrus, Hernando, and Pasco, played as big of a role as any in Trump winning Florida. Home to only 4.4% of the statewide vote, only 18% of the market’s vote, and only 14% of the region – these three counties gave Trump a 73,327 vote larger margin than they did Romney over Obama. To put in perspective, Obama won Florida by 74,309, so had these counties performed for Romney like they did for Trump, Florida would have essentially been a tie.
What do all three counties have in common? They are older, whiter, and have a higher percentage of non-college educated residents than the state – the demographics that really shifted away from Democrats in 2016.
As you move south, we run into the “urban core” of Tampa – Hillsborough, with Pinellas to the west, and Polk to the east. I add Polk in here, because even though it is still rural in many respects, the population corridor from Tampa well into Polk County is now continuous – and before long, there will be no rural lands, at least along Interstate 4, between Tampa and Orlando. Tampa itself is a dynamic city, and the county with a population that is younger, more diverse, and more likely to be college-educated than the state or region, has trended from being a swing county to becoming part of the Democratic base. Just in eight years, the number of Hispanic registered voters has increased by nearly 60,000 – meaning Hispanics are roughly 2 out of every 5 new voters signing up in the county. Hillsborough is also home to Big Cat Rescue run by Carole Baskin, and she and I have 17 mutual friends on Facebook – a fact that has no relevance to anything, other than I am fairly certain this burnishes my Florida Man credentials.
To the east – Imperial Polk County is a place bridging old and new Florida, the county is growing – and changing, due to a rapidly growing Puerto Rican population. Nearly 50% of new registrants since 2012 are Hispanic, a trend that should help Democrats, but is balanced out by Republican gains among non-college educated whites – and this is a place where Trump significantly improved over Romney or McCain – though I would expect Biden to perform better. To the west, Pinellas County – one of the rare swing counties – It has gone Gore -> Bush -> Obama -> Obama -> Trump, is unique in that, at 50.5 years of age, it has the oldest median age of the seven largest counties in Florida – and among those seven counties, is also has the largest share of white voters. In other words, if Joe Biden improves on Hillary Clinton’s standing with seniors – it will show up here.
Finally moving south along the coast, we get to the area known as Manasota. Manatee County, directly south of Hillsborough is the more Republican doctrinaire of the two counties, while Sarasota shows can bounce around a bit – going from a Bush blowout in 2004 to a near Obama win in 08 (I am not ever getting over that one), back to Trump by 11 in 2016. Both are older than the state’s median age, wealthier (in terms of Sarasota, much wealthier), and in the upper tier in terms of education. For me, this will be one of the more interesting areas to watch – not because Biden is likely to win here – but a Biden win will need to cut the margins in an area like this, and a Trump win will need to come close to replicating his 2016 margins.
Further south into the Fort Myers media market, we first get to Charlotte County, which demographically, economically, and educationally looks more like the counties north of Tampa than it does the coastal counties surrounding it, and as such it saw a similar significant shift towards Trump in 2016. Beyond it lie Lee County, and Collier County – two counties that account for 5.2% of the statewide vote, but in 2016, gave Trump a 110K vote margin. In fact, no county gave Trump a larger margin that Lee – though one note – while Trump significantly improved over Romney in Lee – he actually received a smaller share of the vote than Romney in Collier, likely due to its higher percentage of college educated voters.
So, what does all this mean? Are you still awake? Across this region, Trump carried it by 11.7% - 334K votes – some 190k votes more than Romney did. A Biden win will look a lot more like Obama 2012 across the region, which won’t be easy, but is doable. If Trump repeats his 2016 performance here, it is probably game over.
ORLANDO
Now we scoot up I-4 to the Orlando media market. I’ve written extensively about Orlando, here, here and here, so if you really want to dive into nerdville, check those pieces out.
Orlando is the fastest growing media market in Florida – comprising about 21% of the statewide vote. There is almost no question this market will have more than 2 million voters this cycle – roughly same number of voters as Louisiana, or Oregon. The region is also diversifying, with the share of registered voters from communities of color growing from 31% to 36% in just eight years – with a significant majority of that growth coming from Puerto Rican voters (more on this later)
The Orlando media market is fascinating, in that if you compare how Gore/Bush played out compared to Clinton/Trump, you will see the Republican margin of victory was nearly the same both times – roughly 3% - but their win paths look completely different. If you think of the market as two separate ecosystems – one being urban Orlando, specifically Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties – and the other as a six county (Sumter, Marion, Lake, Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard) exurban halfmoon to the north and east of Orlando – in 2000, Bush won the urban counties by about 9K votes, and the exurban counties by 28K. Fast forward to 2020 – Hillary Clinton won the urban counties by 166K votes – but Trump won the exurban counties by 223K votes.
For sake of this piece, we will think about the markets in three buckets: the three counties that make up the “Metro Villages” region; the coastal counties of Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard; and the urban core of Orlando as defined above. The national media tends to focus on one thing: Puerto Rican growth in Orlando, while in fact, the entire region is dynamic – with various counterforces driving the area’s politics.
The northern part of the district often all gets lumped together as The Villages, and while “America’s friendliest neighborhood” does impact all three counties, the region is far more than that. Marion County is old Florida horse country, and many of the world’s top thoroughbreds trained at some point in the Ocala area. Lake County is one of Florida’s most beautiful areas – home unsurprisingly to more than 1,000 lakes and has one of America’s busiest sea plane ports. Lake County is also where adventure seekers flock when they want to conquer Mt. Dora. Sumter County is more rural but is seeing rapid population growth thanks to The Villages.
The area is older – all three counties are in the upper tier of median age for the state – with the median age in Sumter alone pegged at 65 – the highest in the state. The area is growing – not as much as some would think with The Villages – but what it is doing is getting more Republican. In 2008, McCain won these three counties by about 52K votes, with Trump increasing that margin to 115K in just eight years, a gain of 63K votes. Compare this to the entire gain Democrats saw in urban Orlando – a gain in the margin of about 66K votes for Clinton compared to Obama 08 – yet the total number of voters in these three counties is less than half of the total number of voters in urban Orlando. This is an area for Republicans that punches above its weight.
Moving to the east, we take a look at the three coastal counties in the market: Flagler, Volusia, and Brevard (from north to south). Honestly, there is probably no region that more clearly shows the struggles Democrats have had over the last decade than this three-county region. In 2008, McCain won these three counties by about 15,000 votes – with Obama actually winning two of the three counties. Four years later, the GOP advantage rose to roughly 42,000 – and four after, to almost 109,000 – with Clinton not even being competitive in the two counties Obama won just eight years earlier. It was the Volusia result, a county that Obama carried by 14,000 votes in 08 – that flipped to a Trump +34,000 vote margin just eight years later that led me to text my friend Paul Begala on Election Night with my view that the whole thing was probably done.
This is basically a classic white-working class region of the state. Flagler’s fast growth in the 90’s was driven by affordable retirement housing that generally drew retired union workers from the northeast and mid-Atlantic states – and at least one famous person: Shirley Chisholm, who I was blessed to know a bit during her retired years in Palm Coast (she even yelled at me once – justifiably). But over time, the housing boom busted, the economy stalled, and the dream of prosperity moved elsewhere. Volusia was once one of the state’s leading manufacturing areas – as well as home to Daytona International Speedway, a place I call home twice a year. Brevard further south is home to a bunch of legit rocket scientists – and a whole bunch of others whose lives were upended as America made the switch from a government-only space program to the new commercial-space model.
All three counties are whiter than the state median – have a lower percentage of residents with a college income – and have a lower median income than the state. If Joe Biden can regain a foothold with these types of voters in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, you will see the results here in Florida.
Finally, the urban core of Orlando: Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County. In 2004, George Bush carried these two of these counties, and this little region overall. By 2016, the world had changed here. In just eight years, the number of Hispanic voters has risen from 240,000 to over 365,000 – and the share of the electorate that is white has dropped from 55% to 48%. It is also younger than the rest of the Orlando market – whereas the other six counties all have a median age of 47 or higher, each of the three urban Orlando markets have a median age of 40 or younger. Two of the three: Orange and Seminole are towards the top of the state rankings for educational attainment – and both are wealthier in terms of median income. What used to be Mosquito County (literally – and for a reason), is now a thriving metropolis, with an economy that would rival the nation of Kuwait. Hillary Clinton won 2 of the three counties: Orange and Osceola – and the three counties combined by 166K votes. A Joe Biden win will probably mean him winning all three – and even building on that Clinton margin.
Before we go on, I would like to take a point of personal privledge. Please stop asking about and referring to Puerto Rican voters as if they just all moved here after Hurricane Maria. This storyline from the political media is just wrong. Yes, some voters moved here after Maria, but not nearly as many as most predicted (as I predicted would be the case). That being said, the politics of Central Florida is what it is today because of the massive Puerto Rican growth over the last twenty years -- of which the Maria growth is just a fraction. OK- had to get that off my chest. Back to the blog.
Longtime readers have heard me refer to the state as a self-balancing scale – and no place shows this more than Orlando. Donald Trump winning Florida will mean he is able to replicate his success with older voters, and non-college whites – thus matching or even exceeding his 3% win in the Orlando market. A Biden win would mean him making gains with older voters, and non-college educated whites – as well as maximizing his votes with communities of color and suburban white women (note Seminole County). If he does this, there is a world where he returns the entire market back to the Democratic column – and if he does that, honestly, he will probably be the next President.
WEST PALM BEACH
The next two sections won’t be as long – I do promise. The regions are smaller geographically, and well, my carpal tunnel is coming back. We can do this people – just hang in there.
In 2012, Jason Alexander (George on Seinfeld) drove to Boca Raton, FL to do a series of campaign appearances for Barack Obama in retirement communities. It was literally George going to Del Boca Vista, Phase II to see his parents. That whole bit on Seinfeld demonstrates the connective tissue between Palm Beach County and communities in the Northeast. Retiring to Boca or Delray was the dream – it was where guys like George would travel to see their grandparents – and the politics of those communities, places like Century Village or King’s Point, drove the politics of much of the area. They were almost like their own New York boroughs – with their own political infrastructure. While the west side of the state orients towards the Midwest, this side of the state orients up the I-95 corridor.
But like most of this region – that is slowly changing. Home to just over 10% of the statewide vote, yes the Palm Beach media market is still home to massive communities for retirees, but in a lot of the area, retirees are being replaced by younger families from communities of color – often second and third generation immigrant families who are moving north from Miami-Dade. Palm Beach County alone has seen its share of voters from communities of color increase by 7% in just eight years. St. Lucie County further north has seen the same cohort grow in share by 5%.
One note on the region – the boundaries and media markets aren’t necessarily the best cultural divisions. One can argue that Broward County, just to the south – and in the Miami media market, has big chunks that are more “Palm Beach County” in orientation than Miami in orientation. The great “Condo Commandos” of the 90s, folks like “Trinchi" Trinchitella, and Diane Glasser were residents of Broward – when much of Broward felt like Palm Beach.
We actually split the state up this way in the Obama years – but for purposes of ease, this exercise breaks them up into their respective markets. It is also fair to say, as we will get to next – Broward isn’t what it used to be either.
Palm Beach County itself is about 68% of the registered voters in the market, and roughly the same share of Presidential cycle voters. The four other counties: Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie, are located north of Palm Beach County, each have their own character and politics. Every county in the market is coastal, except for one: Okeechobee.
If you remember earlier, I made a point about how often times the inland part of the state has more in common with itself than coastal communities nearby – well Okeechobee fits this bill. Okeechobee is part of the “Florida Heartland” that stretches from Lake Okeechobee to the counties making up the I-4 corridor. This is agriculture country – and when it comes to Okeechobee, it is specifically cattle country. Florida is the 10th largest cattle producer in the nation – and Okeechobee is #1 in Florida. But just like the rural counties to the north, Okeechobee lags in most economic and educational indicators, and just like similar counties to the north, Trump did significantly better than Romney – taking Romney’s 20-point win in 2012 and extending it to 40 points.
Moving to the east – Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, and Palm Beach – the four coastal counties from north to south – were all part of Florida’s original Mosquito County. Yes, we had a county named Mosquito. The decision to disband the territorial county in 1844 was probably as disappointing in the rearview mirror as the decision to change the original state flag, which flew for only one day, when Florida became a state in 1845. Google it. Trust me, it is amazing.
Politically, Indian River and Martin are very similar, with the swing county of St. Lucie sandwiched in between. St. Lucie voted Obama -> Obama -> Trump, just like Pinellas County in the Tampa media market. In case of both Indian River and Martin, both gave Trump a margin over 20 points. The major difference between the three: St. Lucie has a substantially more diverse electorate, only 65% white, compared to 84 and 88% respectively for Indian River and Martin Counties. St. Lucie is the kind of place Biden will need to win to win Florida.
One interesting note on Martin County – longtime drivers of interstates in Florida will remember that the last piece of I-95 to be completed in Florida was through Martin County. Back in the day, drivers would get off at Fort Pierce in St. Lucie and take the Florida Turnpike down to Palm Beach Gardens, in large part because Martin County residents didn’t want the growth that would come with the interstate. As a result, I-95 veers far from the coast in Martin County, before re-aligning with the Florida Turnpike, where, in the most Florida way ever, the two roads literally run next to each other for 17 miles. To this day, I suspect that decision is one main reason why the sprawl of South Florida, ranking the length of the three main SE Florida counties, essentially stops at the Martin County line.
Moving south to the anchor of the market: Palm Beach County. Most people think of Palm Beach County through one of two lenses: Palm Beach itself, or that townhouse where your grandmother retired in a town whose name you can’t remember, unless it is Boca, in which case, Boca. But Palm Beach County is far more than this: for one, it is the largest county by area in the state, and it is #1 in Florida for agricultural revenue (plot twist: Miami-Dade is #2. Much of this is sugarcane, though the county has a very diverse agriculture economy. Palm Beach is also home to the one place you can drive your car next to big game animals: Lion Country Safari, which is actually a legitimately cool place to visit.
Palm Beach County is also exceptionally diverse. Almost 46% of county residents come from communities of color, and some 25% of the county is foreign born. In terms of migration into the county, the largest populations are coming from the Caribbean, hence you will find Creole spoken in the county, in addition to both English and Spanish. And while there is a large retired population here, of the four coastal counties in this market, Palm Beach has the lowest percentage of its population over 65.
The politics of the county are generally Democratic, though there are Republican pockets. Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012 carried the county by nearly identical vote margins: roughly 107K votes – though in terms of vote share, that dropped a 17% Obama margin to 15.5% for Secretary Clinton. This combined with Trump’s stronger performance in the northern four counties dropped President Obama’s 8.5% margin in 2012 to just over 5% for Secretary Clinton in 2016.
This area will be an absolute battleground. Trump will try to continue to make gains in the market, while Vice President Biden will have an opportunity to return to the Obama margins by increasing his vote share among seniors, as well the growing population within communities of color. The county did look closer to the Obama margins for the Democratic statewide candidates in 2018.
MIAMI-FORT LAUDERDALE
The final chapter of this saga takes us to the Miami media market – home of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe County. Home to about 25% of the state’s population – but due to the large number of residents without citizenship, just under 20% of the statewide vote, this is absolutely the most diverse corner of the state. Over 70% of registered voters here come from communities of color, and within this population, the diversity is on par with the most cosmopolitan areas anywhere in the world. It is also home to some of the most hair-raising traffic in the world – as my friend and noted Florida pollster Tom Eldon likes to say: “Miami must be the most religious place on Earth, since everyone drives like they are at complete peace with God.”
This is the Democratic base of the state. In the counties that Secretary Clinton win in 2016, she carried a total margin of roughly 971,000 votes – nearly 60% of that margin came from the two counties of Broward and Miami-Dade. The battle here is simple: Democrats want to run up the margin, and Republicans want to find ways to keep it down.
Before we jump into the two big counties, let’s take a second and mention the southernmost county in the state: Monroe County. Monroe County is home to the Florida Keys, part of which is “technically” a foreign nation occupied by American citizens. The good people of Key West seceded from the union in 1982, and never formally returned. Monroe is one of the highest income counties in the state, where more than 20% of the population makes its income from the entertainment industry. The county is traditionally pretty competitive, though it has trended more Republican over the last cycle or two. Trump won the county by about 3K votes in 2016.
Broward County is the northernmost county in the market. Broward is home to just under 2 million residents, of which nearly 1/3 are foreign born -- and it is rapidly diversifying. The county is the 17th largest by population in the nation – and is largely built out, with some communities bumping right up against The Everglades. There are 31 municipalities inside Broward, and most of them have their own unique character, including the Venice of America, Fort Lauderdale. While this is a massive generalization – the northern part of Broward has more in common with Palm Beach County, and the southern part of Broward kind of morphs into Dade County (and yes all of you about to tweet at me, I know there are exceptions to this rule).
As a result of the diversifying population, among registered voters, in just 8 years, the share of the white vote has dropped from 52.3% to 42.8%. The fastest growing segment of the voter pool are Hispanics, whose share of registered voters has increased by over 5%. While in most places, Black voters – which in Broward are both African American and Caribbean voters, are seeing their share of the vote remain fairly consistent – here these communities are growing as a share of the vote. If Joe Biden wins, he will almost certainly be the first candidate to win Broward with a margin north of 300,000 votes.
Just south of Broward is Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade is quite possibly the single most diverse city in the world, with roughly 85% of the population comprised of residents who are considered ethnic minorities in the United States, and roughly half the population is foreign born. Hispanics make up the largest segment of the population – and within Hispanics, Cubans are the dominant group, though there are meaningful and growing populations from nations all over Latin America, most notably Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.
The diversity extends into the Black community – home to large populations from the Bahamas, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica. Roughly 125,000 people in Dade speak Creole at home. That being said, the share of the Black vote as a percentage of all registered voters in Dade is dropping, though the share of voters who register as either “other” or “mixed” has increased, so it could be a situation of voters reclassifying themselves. Tracking the Caribbean Black population can be difficult, since there is no specific category on either voter registration forms or census figures. That being said, there is some evidence that the drop in Black participation in 2016 in comparison to 2012 was as a result of lower turnout among Caribbean voters – and for Democrats this cycle, staying focused on engaging this growing segment of the population is important.
A lot has been written of late about Dade County, the Trump and Biden support among Hispanics, and the margin needed for Biden to win. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Dade County by 16 points. Four years later, we won it by 24 points, and four years after that, Secretary Clinton won it by 29 points. Two polls last week showed Biden with a 17 and an 18-point lead, with both showing a fairly robust undecided.
The Clinton margins of 2016 are likely not replicable. First, the Clinton’s have 30 years of relationship building in Miami, as President Clinton was one of the first Democrats to actively campaign for the Cuban vote. Secondly, Republicans and Trump have had four years of outreach work. Does Joe Biden have to win the same share of the vote in Dade? Today, the answer to that is no – largely due to the fact that while Biden might not win Dade by the same margin as Clinton, thanks to Biden’s stronger support levels among white seniors and white suburban votes, Trump is not likely to win many of his counties by the same margin he did four years ago. That being said, if Biden can get to the Obama 2012 levels, he will end up coming close to matching Secretary Clinton’s media market margins, as is likely to win Broward by a larger vote margin. Obama won the overall market by 28 points in 2012, with Clinton carrying it by 31 in 2016. Anywhere north of that 2012 margin is a pretty solid goal – as long as the rest of the state does its job.
WHERE DO WE STAND
I am glad you have read this far. I am also glad I have written this far and not quit. Also, thank you for ignoring the grammar mistakes - I have re-read this several times, but I am sure I missed things. I know Twitter will find them :-)
Florida is going to be close – not because of any particular strengths or weaknesses of either candidate, but just because it is wired this way. If you take all the people who have voted in Presidential elections since 1992, Florida has seen north of 51 million ballots cast, and the difference between the total number of Republican ballots and total number of Democratic ballots is less than 20,000 votes. Yes, you read that right.
The thing that makes Florida close is that all the areas above cancel each other out. Here’s one perspective – if you take the markets that each party tends to win every election – for Democrats that is Miami, Palm Beach, Gainesville, and Tallahassee – and for Republicans, Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers, the 2012 and 2016 races were basically identical, with both parties coming within a few thousands votes in 2016 of their 2012 margins. The entirety in the change in that election was in the I-4 markets – where Democrats did better in urban counties, and Trump did significantly better everywhere else.
The battlelines in 2020 won’t be much different. Trump will continue to try to solidify and grow support in communities with high numbers of non-college whites. Biden will look to cut Republican margins in communities with more seniors, and higher numbers of suburban women. Biden will look to increase Black turnout to something closer to 2012 levels, and both will fight for Hispanics – though their paths in these communities are different.
There is no single key to winning here – and both campaigns have smart, experienced Florida leadership. Getting to 50% here is about assembling the right pieces of the puzzle all across the board.
Lastly, I haven't gotten my head around how to do the daily memos as I have in the past. As much as I enjoy them, my own responsibilities this cycle are different, and time consuming. This doesn’t mean I won’t provide thoughts and analysis (and definitely some memos), just that I don’t know yet if I will have the time to do them daily – or at least in the same form I did in 2016 and 2018, both cycles where I ended up spending the fall months largely in the bullpen. So stay tuned.
Thanks again for reading all the way to the end. Florida is not only the most competitive - it is the most interesting of all the battleground states, thanks to people from all walks of life and all corners of the Earth moving here -- probably including you one day (if you don't already live here). So buckle up for the ride - and whatever you do this cycle, make sure you vote.
And Go Jaguars!