| The truth is that Florida is a purple state with congressional and legislative districts which were highly gerrymandered by the Republican legislature in 2002. This last fact gives people the impression sometimes that Florida is a Red state.
But Florida has a high proportion of No Party Affiliation registrants and state-wide elections depend more on the quality of the candidate, their particular story and their funding (what a surprise) rather than the candidate's party affiliation.
Certainly Obama met these three requirements for winning and combined it with a killer ground game (credit here to former Florida Democratic Party wunderkind Steve Schale, Obama's Florida campaign coordinator). But did his campaign actually achieve a real transformation in Florida politics?
The best way to answer this is to look at the state-wide elections of 2006. There were five of them. Republicans won three (Governor, Attorney General, Agricultural Commissioner) and Democrats two (Chief Financial Officer and US Senator). And the statewide candidate that got the most votes (both percentage of win and gross votes) was Democrat (or DINO if you prefer) Bill Nelson. And the lowest percentage of a winning candidate was Charlie Crist, the new governor.
Just from these results it is clear that Florida was pretty purple even in 2006. But let's look at things a bit closer. First let me throw up a county map of the state so you have something to refer to.
Obama won 15 of Florida 's 67 counties. By name they are: Alachua, Broward, Flagler, Gadsden , Hillsborough, Jefferson , Leon , Miami-Dade (it's consolidated), Monroe , Orange , Osceola, Palm Beach , Pinellas, St. Lucie, and Volusia.
Demographically these are usually described as the high density counties of the southeast, the counties centered around Tallahassee where Florida State and Florida A&M universities are, the county where the University of Florida is and a swath thru the central portion of the state usually referred to as the I-4 corridor.
When we compare this result to the result of the 2006 governor's race (similar to the 2004 presidential) it does look impressive. The Democratic candidate for governor didn't win any of the I-4 corridor counties and also lost Monroe (home to Key West -you make what you want of that).
But Jim Davis was a weak, liberal, underfunded candidate who has the misfortune of resembling John Kerry. The man didn't have a chance. He was lucky Crist only won with 52% of the vote.
But let's look at the performance of the two Democratic winners in 2006, CFO Alex Sink and Sen. Bill Nelson.
Sink won 17 counties that Obama didn't win and only lost one that he took, Hillsborough. But this last was an anomaly because her opponent, Tom Lee, was from the area and had a home base advantage. She also won with a 53% percentage to Obama's 51%.
It is extremely instructive to look at the counties that Sink won that Obama lost. Here's the list: Brevard, Citrus, Dixie, Franklin , Hamilton , Hernando, Jackson , Lafayette , Liberty , Madison , Okeechobee, Pasco , Putnam, Sarasota , Swannee, Taylor , and Wakulla.
First, it's important to know that Sink has a mild southern accent, (she's from North Carolina ), was well funded (she used to be a high level bank executive), and ran commercial's pushing her fiscal conservatism. She's also a natural campaigner with a lot of charisma.
While it's never possible to be certain about such things, when you look at these counties, you kind of wonder if Obama lost them because of his race. These are the so-called Dixiecrat counties of north Florida and the more conservative suburban counties on the coasts.
If so, then Obama's achievement was that his organizational and funding accomplishments and compelling story were able to offset the negative effects of race, here in Florida and throughout the country.
What about Bill Nelson's results? As a celebrity ex-astronaut Nelson is sui generis, so his results are difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from. Also, in 2006 his opponent was Katherine Harris, who my wife recently characterized as Florida 's answer to Sarah Palin. His 60% share that year should probably be considered as an upper limit for a Democratic state-wide candidate.
He only lost the nine reliably Republican counties of Baker, Bay, Clay, Collier, Holmes, Nassau , Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and St. Johns . These are clustered around the military bases in the northwest and northeast parts of the state along with Collier in the southwest, which is a home to country club retirees from up north.
So, far from turning Florida blue, Obama simply was the latest one to swing the pendulum a little his way in this decidedly purple state. A more meaningful test will come in 2010 when Republican senator Mel Martinez is up for re-election along with Governor Crist and the three statewide cabinet posts. It will be interesting to see if the Democrats can win three of these five seats.
It's going to take a lot of work and scrounging up some good candidates for that to happen. |
