FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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Previous Articles by Derek Newton: Ten Things Fox on Line 1 Stem Cells are Intelligent Design Katrina Spin No Can't Win Perhaps the Most Important Race Senate Outlook The Nelson Thing Deep, Dark Secret Smart Boy Bringing Guns to a Knife Fight Playing to our Strength  

The Blog for Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Playing to our Strength

    by Derek Newton

    In order 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.

    The problem is that it’s just not true.

    Like it or not, Floridians don’t live in the smaller, rural, more conservative nooks and crannies. They are overwhelmingly in the cities and large suburban counties.

    In fact, just Florida’s largest three counties deliver more than a quarter of all Florida’s votes. The top five counties together are almost 40% of the state total. And more than 80% of all of Florida’s votes were cast in the top 20 counties.

    Put another way, Floridians in the smallest 47 counties (the more conservative and rural ones) cast just one of every five ballots.

    I know some people are already saying, “But Democrats can’t ignore those 47 counties. We’ll get killed.”

    Yes we can. And no we won’t.

    Even if Republicans win those 47 counties by a lopsided 70% to 30% margin, Democrats only need to win 55% of the vote in the remaining 20 counties to carry Florida. If we lose those 47 by an astonishing 80% to 20% margin, Democrats only need to win the remaining 20 Counties with 58% to win the state.

    Keep that ratio in mind. Democrats have to pick-up a full 4% of the vote in Florida’s smaller 47 counties to get the same number of votes we get from a 1% increase in the top 20.

    The last four statewide Democratic candidates finished in the following order: Gore (48.8%), Kerry (47.1%), MacKay (44.7%) and McBride (43.2%). McBride was the lowest scorer and Kerry was second. But comparisons between McBride and Kerry are not far off. Both were unknown to Florida voters before they ran and both sought to dethrone incumbent Bushs.

    So where did McBride fail to cash-in when compared to Kerry?

    You guessed it: Florida’s largest counties. McBride’s top vote loss counties were Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. And those losses weren’t nearly offset by McBride gains in smaller counties. All tolled, McBride didn’t get 270,000 votes in Florida’s largest three counties that Kerry did. To offset the losses in just those three counties, McBride would have had to win 27% more of the vote in the smallest 47 Counties. That’s probably impossible.

    And where did Kerry stumble compared to Gore?

    Different question. Same answer. As I wrote previously, in just six of the state’s 20 largest counties Kerry suffered a full two-thirds of his statewide loss total.

    The case can be made that neither Kerry nor McBride lost their campaigns in Florida by failing to win the smaller, rural more counties. Even if the war hero and native lawyer had done better there, they’d have lost because they didn’t do enough in Florida’s large counties.

    So if you’re a Democratic strategist or advising the Democratic candidates seeking statewide office, what would you suggest?

    It makes sense to me that Florida Democrats should campaign where the votes are. Small things in large communities can make a big difference.

    And since the top 20 Counties have more cultural diversity and more problems with their schools and health care systems, Democratic messages and candidates will work better there anyway. Perhaps it’s time for statewide Democrats to play to our strengths and make Republicans answer for their failures in our cities and suburbs.

    Doing that may just give African-Americans and Hispanics and suburban soccer moms and retirees reasons to vote for Democrats. If we do that, I am sure we can win in Florida again.

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