Playing to our Strength - A Dissent

In Tuesday's post, "Playing to our Strength", Derek Newton generated some controversy in challenging the notion that "to win statewide in Florida a Democrat has to win the smaller, mostly rural counties in the central and northern part of the state. Okay, maybe not win but at least not lose too badly. You know, minimize the damage." There were quite a number of substantive responses to this, several of which we will repost on the main page today and tomorrow for your consideration. Today, the thoughts of BlueDawgDem.

First, Florida's urban counties are quickly losing their total share of the total electorate. Based on current population and voting trends, the urban counties will fall to 45 percent of the electorate by the end of the decade (down from over 50% in the 90's). This is a fact that Democrats must consider when looking at the statewide map.

I would argue this trend played itself out in 2004. For example, both Kerry and Castor had much larger vote margins in our base counties (the six florida counties we always win---alachua, broward, gadsden, jefferson, leon, and palm beach) than did Bill Clinton, when he won the state in 1996.

However, unlike Clinton, both Kerry and Castor were creamed in the 24 counties always carried by the Republican. Whereas Clinton lost these counties by a combined 200,000, Castor lost them by more than 490,000---and Kerry by well over 600,000. Since Kerry only lost the "swing" counties by some 12,000 votes total, he can pretty well chalk up his lost to a failure to reach across the voting aisle and persuade some right-leaning independents and moderate republicans to join him. (Even if Kerry had done as well as Clinton in these swing counties--places like Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas, Pasco, Dade, and Osceola counties, he still would have lost the state by 200,000 votes).

Secondly, within those 47 smallest counties are many of Florida's fastest growing. For example, places like St. Johns, Clay, Santa Rosa, Bay, and Okaloosa Counties all have substantially faster growth in their electorate than do Palm, Broward, or Dade. This trend is worse in off-year elections, when voter turnout is lower in the counties where we need the votes. With their astronomical growth, these counties will change the face of the statewide electorate in coming years.

Finally, the four candidates mentioned in the original post all lost (granted, Gore really won---but not by much). The one candidate that was left out---Bill Nelson, carried Florida by some 300,000 votes---and won 37 counties, despite the fact that his numbers in our base counties were idenitical to Gore's, nor were they substantially different in the swing counties (at least not enough to make up the difference in vote margins). However, unlike the Gore camp (and McBride, and Kerry, and etc., etc.), he did invest resources in Florida's growing counties. By losing less in places like Escambia (loss of 20,000 votes compared to 33,000) and Okaloosa (Nelson had a 6,000 vote better margin than Gore), Nelson was able to pick off enough voters to provide him with an electoral majority.

It is also noteworthy that no Democrat has one statewide (at least since 1990) without carrying at least twenty counties.

There simply are not enough votes in the base Democratic counties (anymore) to simply write-off the rest of the state---and I believe unless the Democrats begin articulating a message that will appeal to mainstream Floridians (and thus rural and suburban voters), we are destined to a land of infrequent wins.

To which BlueDawgDem adds this:

[I]f you look at the seven fastest growing counties in terms of total statewide vote share, Orange, Hillsborough, St. Johns, Duval, Seminole, Collier, and Marion counties, we have lost every significant statewide election since 1996 in all but two of them (Hillsborough and Orange).

It is also important to note that two of the four slowest growing counties, as a percent of the total electorate, are Palm Beach and Broward.

And this:

[I]f you stop ignoring Duval, you are destined to do better in the incredibly fast growing outlying counties of Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau. This area is growing as fast--if not faster than the rest of the state. Between the 1994 and 2002 Gubernatorial elections, Duval increased its voter turnout by well over 60,000 voters---and those voters broke Republican by a margin greater than 4 to 1. Many of the outlying counties saw their voter turnout increase by 50-75 percent over the same period, with those new voters breaking Republican by a margin of 10:1 and greater.

[Stop assuming that Miami-Dade is a "base" county. It should be treated as a swing county which means you need to get up on TV there as much as the GOP does.] If anything, the county is lean Republican in Gubernatorial elections. The last off-year Dem to carry Miami-Dade was Chiles in 1994, and that was by a mere 16,000 votes.

Lastly, I will reiterate my belief that we must dump the same tired tactic of turning out the same voters. Every year, we talk about turning out the base, and every year, we lose---worse than the election before. Sadly, the fact is that our base has stagnated---while their base is growing.

All you have to do is look at the performance in base counties. Despite phenominal statewide growth...and a huge amount of effort poured into base tunrout, McBride's numbers in Broward, Palm and Miami-Dade were strikingly similar to Chiles in 1994---just as Kerry's were strikingly similar to Gore's---and just like Gore, Kerry's plan appeared to focus almost exclusively on a handful of counties. In fact, if you go all the way back to Clinton, you will see that Dem Presidentical campaigns have actually made pretty strong gains in the base counties between the 96 and 00 elections---yet saw their margin of victory dwindle statewide from roughly 250,000 to just a handful of chads.

At the same time, Republicans were investing huge dollars elsewhere in Florida. When you consider than 1 milliom more voters came to vote in 2002 than did in 1994...and those voters broke 8:1 Republican...and that the Republicans have yet to make the kind of gains in rural Florida in Gubernatorial elections that they have made in Presidential elections, you come to one and only one conclusion---we must expand our base to survive.

Derek's response.