Florida, Florida, Florida.

We embark on our first look at a specific state and we begin with Florida. (Sorry for the delay. We promised a review of Florida yesterday but it took a bit longer than we had hoped.)

There are many good reasons to start with the Sunshine State. First, it is the battleground state with the most Electoral College votes (29) and the third most overall, behind only California (55) and Texas (38).

Second, Florida is likely to be an essential state for the Republicans. In five consecutive elections, Democrats have won the same 18 states and D.C. with 242 Electoral votes. This is known as the Blue Wall. The Blue Wall plus Florida is Victory for Democrats. It would be overstating it to say that these states are locks for the Democrats; there have been quite a few close calls on the way and Republicans do seem to be targeting three of those states this time, Pennsylvania (20) and to a lesser extent Wisconsin (10) and Michigan (17). 

Third, Florida has seen exceptionally close elections in the Obama era. Leaving aside for the moment Florida 2000, Obama won the state by 2.82% in 2008, Republicans won the Governorship by 1.2% in 2010. Obama won Florida in 2012 by .88% and in 2014 Governor Rick Scott was re-elected by 1%.  Even the Great Marco Rubio only got 48.9% of the vote in his 2010 Senate Race; then Independent (now Democrat) Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek got more votes than Rubio. Florida is a very closely divided state. 

But a political earth quake began rumbling through that state long before Donald Trump arrived though he may well be accelerating it. President Obama’s margin of victory dropped by almost two points from 2.82% in 2008 to .88%. in 2012. Yet at a county level, some of the forces making Florida more Democratic were already apparent.  

The largest and most important county in the state and the one leading its political transformation is Miami-Dade. In 2008, Obama took 58% of the vote in Miami-Dade. By 2012, his take had shot up to 62%. That means he scored a 4% gain in Miami-Dade while losing 2% statewide. Miami-Dade’s transition from a close county for Democrats (Gore and Kerry each took 53%) to being a blowout for Obama in 2012 has a huge impact on the state overall. Miami-Dade has a lot of votes. Obama won the state by 74,309 votes in 2012; he won Miami-Dade by 208,174 votes. Kerry won Miami-Dade by 48,637 votes. Gore won it by 39,293. When Democrats improve their performance by 150,000 votes in a county that is difficult to make up.

If anything, Trump’s Miami-Dade problems are worse than Romney’s. He did quite poorly here in the primary and many of the country’s leading Never Trump Republicans live here, including two of three of the county’s Republican members of Congress. Miami Dade also has about 870,000 voters. So each 1% drop in support for a Republican presidential candidate is worth 8,700 votes. Thus bleeding from Romney’s 38% to even 35% is a big block of votes. And it could easily be worse.  

The other key area for Obama improvement/holding-the-line is in the Central Florida counties of Orange (Orlando) and Osceola that are becoming part of the Democratic base. In 2012 Obama netted 111,790 from these two counties. Kerry actually lost the two counties by a combined 3,669, while Gore only netted 7,606 out of these counties. This is the other massive change in the Democrats’ favor.   

Assuming the same margin as Obama got in 2012, Democrats are on track to net almost 320,000 votes out of these two counties, plus Miami-Dade. That is more than 250,000 votes better than Kerry and Gore performed in these three counties. These three counties alone would have erased roughly 72% of John Kerry’s 2004 five-point loss.  Clinton looks to improve on Obama’s 2012 performance in these three counties but even holding serve is a problem for Trump.

What is more interesting is where Obama bled and why those places won’t necessarily help Trump. Obama pretty much hit the Democratic floor in the Northwestern Florida Panhandle in 2008 and did not bleed that much more in 2012. Where Obama did  much worse in 2012 was in upper income white areas and counties in Northeast, Southwest and Central Florida with the exception of Orange, Osceola, Hillsborough (Tampa), Pinnellas (St Petersburg) and Polk Counties. These Obama-to-Romney switchers are the exact type of voters Trump is in danger of giving up ground to, not making up ground with. And he can’t pick up votes among downscale whites who voted for Obama in Florida in 2008 or 2012 because they didn’t. They voted for McCain or Romney.

Florida is also where the rubber meets the road in purely demographic terms. The most recent voter registration data shows a Florida electorate that is only 65% registered non-Hispanic white. Given Trump’s difficulty with Jewish Americans who will make up 5% of the electorate, Trump is looking at his base group of white Christians at about 60%. With the other 40%, he will be lucky to hold on to 25% -- and that is a generous estimate. Trump would need to win the votes of two out of every three white Christians, and probably a touch better (assuming he won’t get the quarter of other voters he needs).

When you start slicing the white electorate up into other pieces by education, sexual orientation or religiosity, things get even trickier for Trump. Still, there is a path for him. Florida has a lot of Republicans and not much reason to believe Clinton will be able to beat the Obama 2008 margin by a lot if at all. But in the end, it seems the defection of Miami-Dade, combined with the rise of the O counties, makes the math tough for a Republican such as Trump. It is going to be close, as Florida is always close, but building a Trump map to victory is hard.