How this one weird trick can help Florida Democrats win more elections

There isn’t a day that goes by that someone, either in person or on-line, doesn't ask me why aren’t Democrats winning in Florida more often. 

The truth is – it isn’t an easy question with a simple answer - and in reality, much of the answer in terms of candidate recruitment, and the quality of actual campaigns lies outside the realm of the average activist.  But there is one thing that every Democrat can do – and every Democratic group can do to put candidates in a better place to win.

Register voters.

In Florida, Democrats register voters well for about four months every four years, and other than that, not so much.  And yes, while there are groups that are doing good work, the numbers over the last ten years, are well, about as good as Blake Bortles QB rating as a member of the Jaguars.

Here are the raw numbers.

In 2008, when voters went to the polls to elect then Senator Barack Obama, Democrats had a voter registration advantage of just under 660,000 voters, which in terms of share of the electorate, was almost 6% more than the Republicans (42%-36%).  Fast forward to the competitive Governor’s race of 2014, and the advantage was down to just over 450,000 voters, or an advantage of just under 4% (38.8%-35%).  And when voters went to the polls in 2018, the advantage was down to just over 250,000 voters, with Democrats lead in voter registration share now below 2%.

In other words, over 10 years, Democrats saw their voter registration advantage drop by 400,000 voters.

And to put that into context:

In 2014, Crist lost by about 60,000 votes.

In 2016, Clinton lost by just over 100,000 votes.

In 2018, Gillum lost by just over 30,000 votes.

And Bill Nelson lost by about 10,000 votes.

You get the idea.

Register. Freaking. Voters.

Now, I know what you are going to say:  Steve, you aren’t accounting for the purge, suppression, conservative Democrats switching parties, etc.

So, let’s take a deeper look at some of these numbers.

Let’s look at the Deep South Dixiecrat theory – of the statewide 400,000 voter margin gain Republicans have seen, about 150,000 can be attributed to the old Panhandle media markets.  However, it isn’t as though these counties aren’t seeing growth – so that 150,000 isn’t all just party switching.  And honestly, the GOP margins in North Florida aren’t substantially changing.

On flip side, take the Orlando media market, home to an exploding Puerto Rican population, and over the last ten years, despite the population shifts that should help my party, Republicans have registered more voters than Democrats, proof that alone, demographics isn't destiny.  In fact, the only market that favors the Democrats over the last ten years is Miami, though for context, the Miami gains don't even make up for the GOP voter registration gains in the Jacksonville media market alone.   

Yes, the laws make it hard to register voters.  Yes, the purges disproportionally impact Democratic voters.  Yes, registering voters is difficult, time consuming, and tedious work.  But nothing is easy. 

The reality is the electorate is substantially more diverse than it was ten years ago.  In 2008, when Obama won, non-white registered voters made up just under 31% of the electorate.  Today, that number is 37%.  In fact, the only segment of the population making up a smaller share of the electorate than it did ten years ago are non-Hispanic white voters.  Further, despite making up just 16.5% of the current registered voters, over the last ten years, the growth in the actual number of Hispanic voters has outpaced non-Hispanic whites by over 200,000 voters. 

On paper, the electorate should be getting more Democratic.  But it isn’t.   

If Charlie Crist would have had Barack Obama’s electorate in 2014, he probably would have won.  If Gillum and Nelson had either the 2008 or 2014 electorate, they also probably would have won.   

And registering voters has a secondary, but equally important outcome:  it puts people back into vital communities, and gives us a chance to engage community leaders on a year-round basis.  People who are registering voters are also doing voter outreach, opinion leader outreach, and community engagement.  Furthermore, by funding party organizers to do voter registration, we can address the very legitimate concerns many have about the party’s lack of inclusion and outreach – as well as put people in communities to make the pitch why new voters shouldn’t just be new voters – but they should be new Democratic voters.  While the outside groups do really good work, for the sake of partisan organizing, nothing beats an actual partisan or candidate organizer.

People like to talk about the various “secrets” of how Barack Obama won – while other Democrats didn’t:  one of those secrets – using voter registration to help reshape the electorate.   For example, between 2006 and 2008, Democrats saw their registration advantage in Florida grow by almost the same 400,000 voters that we’ve lost since 2008.  Without those gains, does Barack Obama win in Florida in 2008?  Honestly, the answer is unlikely.

So yes, there is this one little trick you can do help elect more Democrats – help make the state look more Democratic:  go to the Florida Democratic Party, and sign up to register voters, or write them a check so they can organize voters.  Is it the only thing we have to do? No.  But is it the most important thing that most activists and groups can do?  Absolutely. 

PS -- To my DUVAL Democratic friends -- we finally have a real quarterback (God willing) -- go register him to vote.  :-)

Let's talk about polling, again.

Let’s huddle up for a second and have a little chat about polling.

In 2018, I spoke to 25-30 groups and without fail, there were two questions always asked:

1. How is Blake Bortles still in the NFL?
2. And some variation of Why is the polling always wrong?

Now that the Jaguars have benched Bortles, we can dispense with the first question and focus on the second one.

There are basically two kinds of polls:  the ones you don’t see, and the ones you do.  Candidates who are spending millions and millions on television need good data, and that is the polling you don’t see – or at best rarely see.  In the public line, these are the dreaded “internal polls” – polls that when they see the light of day must be wrong, because they are released with an agenda.   However internal polling is typically pretty spot on – for two very connected reasons:  political pollsters stake their reputation on good numbers, because candidates must have the best information to make decisions – and candidates spend a lot of money for those polls to be accurate.  For example, during the 2018 Democratic primary for Governor, while the public polling missed it, our internal Graham polling was pretty clear that Jeff Greene's negative attacks on Phil Levine and Gwen created significant downward movement for the frontrunners in the race and space for Andrew Gillum to rise -- just as in the same way, the DeSantis private polling, which was released, showed his surge over Putnam to be earlier, more significant, and more sustained than the public polling reported.

Then there are the public polls.

First, longtime readers of this blog will know my issues with public polling did not start in 2016 or 2018.  Longtime political analyst Charlie Cook once called public polling “dime store junk,” a phrase that sometimes, is charitable.  I’ve been particularly harsh on Quinnipiac (I believe I've called their polling a "dumpster fire" and once suggested they couldn't count the topings on a pizza), not because I have any particular dislike for the school, or their beloved mascot Boomer the Bobcat, but because their polling is often cited as a benchmark.   When organizations like Quinnipiac publish polls, given the brand they have created, people take them at face value -- despite the fact their polling in Florida has often been a disaster – like the Jaguars football season.

Let me give you an example.  The 2012 Romney/Obama Florida race was one of the most stable races I’ve ever been around.  Both candidates started with a pretty high floor, and while there was movement, there were never any big shifts in the race, and the race never moved far from even.  Yet, over a four-month period, Quinnipiac had the race go from +6 Romney to +9 Obama – then within a month, back to Romney +1.  Over that period, the RCP polling average moved a couple tenths of a point.  Another university pollster called the race for Romney just weeks after they had Obama +3.    In reality, the race was always very close.

Public polling in the Governor’s race here in Florida in 2018 was, to quote noted linguist Deion Sanders, a total “shibacle.”  Back to the Quinnipiac, I felt like I spent most of October dealing with texts/emails/tweets from activists/donors/supporters wondering why I kept saying the Senate and Governor’s race were close, when the Q poll kept saying it wasn’t.  And they weren’t alone – the bulk of public polling lived in a reality that was separate from the real one.

So where is the disconnect?  Let’s explore a few things:

1. First, most public polling is done at a fraction of the cost.  That alone will diminish the quality – in a lot of university polling, live callers are students, not trained call centers.  Robo polls are cheap and can’t be used to reach cell phone users (though some use internet panels to supplement).  It isn’t a hard and fast rule about everything, but generally in life, if you spend $1,500-2,000 versus spending $40-60,000, the former product will be inferior.
2. Florida’s voter file is public, but many pollsters still use random digit dialing off phone lists, which will always lead to a survey that is broader than the electorate at large.
3. Florida’s electorate is exceptionally stable, yet many public pollsters don’t weigh their models.  For example, some just let party ID “float” – meaning it pegging the turnout model to wherever the random sample lands it, making a race seem fluid, when in fact, the only thing really moving is the public pollster’s model.
4. Florida is a hard state to poll, particularly with ethnic minorities.  Our state’s Hispanic and Black populations are both exceptionally diverse and missing the mark here can really mess up a survey.  For example, take a survey of 800 Florida votes, and you probably will get about 120 Hispanic respondents.  If that sample is too Puerto Rican, the whole thing will be too Democratic – and if it is too Cuban, it could make it look too Republican. 

And keep in mind, beyond this, polling that is done well typically has a 95% confidence rate – meaning that 5% of polls that are done are going to be off.

The problem with these issues is they create a lot of “noise” in polling – as in the 2012 example of Quinnipiac showing a 15 point move in a race over four months that maybe moved 2 points.

And here’s where it starts to go south. The media reports public polling as fact, typically with very little context, and often with no regard for a pollster’s record – particularly as news coverage looks more and more like sports coverage, with the focus on who is winning or losing.  Put numbers next to a name, and add a little paragraph about the poll, and someone will at least tweet it.  And supporters of different campaigns latch on to one poll or another, to bolster their own arguments. 

I do think there is a place for public polling, and a lot of groups do a ton of fascinating work.  For example, you should read everything the Pew Trusts puts out – not because of their great horserace numbers, but because they engage in fascinating surveys about the political and cultural fabric of America.

But since I don’t think public horserace polling is going away, here are a few ideas on how we should consume it going forward:

1.  Every poll that is reported should have a very specific methodology statement that breaks down their sample in very specific terms.  All good science – and polling is a science – should be replicable. It shouldn’t take high level calculus to re-engineer a poll.  Who did they call?  What was the party split, ethnic split, gender split, and regional breakdown?  And how was the data collected? None of this is too much to ask.  If this isn’t available, don’t report it.
2. Individual polls should be reported next to polling averages.  The averages themselves aren’t perfect, but at least provide some context of when a poll is outside of reality – therefore when CNN releases a poll showing the Governor’s race in Florida at a 12-point margin, the consumer can see this is an outlier.
3. To this last point, journalists need to do a better job of filtering this stuff.  Journalists don’t have to report every poll that comes across the email.  My friend Tom Eldon takes it a step further, and suggests, just like the College Playoff Committee only updates its poll once a week, maybe journalists should aggregate polling, and release it once a week.
4. Finally, it is not news that Florida is a very close state – top level races are going to be inside the margin of error – so when someone releases numbers that show someone winning by a margin that is outside the norms of political reality, even if they come from an organization with “university” in the title, there is no requirement to publish them.

There are some journalists who are wise in how they report polling, and not every public poll is a mess, but overall, the incentive is for groups to create public polls, because public polls create news – and news creates interest in the organization doing the polling.  And while I don’t believe organizations intentionally publish suspect data, again, there is little incentive to tighten up their internal controls and try to get things closer to right.  Until the news media decides to collectively be more careful in reporting this data, it is up to the rest of us to be skeptical.

So, about Tuesday night...

OK, it is time to talk about that thing that happened.  No, not the Jaguars blowing a 16-point lead in the 4^th quarter – though I have plenty to say about that – I am talking about the election. 

Before I get into it, this election was the third consecutive Governor’s race decided by a point or less, bracketing two consecutive Presidential elections decided by a point.  This drives homes two points:  One, Florida, for all its dynamic growth and demographic changes, is very stable; and Two, when organizations like Quinnipiac try to peddle off polls showing candidates in Florida with 6-point leads, or 9-point leads, you now know what to do with that information (a post/rant on public polling is coming soon).

There are a lot of reasons why Florida is very competitive – you can read my take here – but it is what it is.  Big chunks of Florida cancel each other out, and both parties have large, and quite dug-in bases – and neither have a base that alone gets them to 50% + 1.  Winning Florida (or losing it) is about managing the margins throughout Florida. 

A couple of things – for the sake of this exercise, I am going to look at the Governor’s race, for one, and only one reason:  the consistency of comparing races over time.  In terms of the Senate race, much of the difference between Nelson and Gillum occurred in places like Brevard, where Nelson has a very long history, and Pinellas, where again, I think Nelson’s history on the ballot helped him out.    Gillum did slightly better in Duval, and in Orange/Osceola counties – which is likely a testament to the work Scott did after Hurricane Maria as much as anything.   But overall, the margins are similar.

Also, there are a lot of ways we could view this race, but since it is my blog, I am going to start by breaking it down as GOP base markets (Pensacola, Panama City, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers) versus DEM base markets (Tallahassee, Gainesville, West Palm, and Miami) – and the I-4 markets (Orlando & Tampa). 

Let me start at where I ended a piece in early October, my view at the time on the race: “While I am currently bullish about my party’s chances, both from the standpoint of mood, and Dem opportunities for growth, if DeSantis and Scott are able to replicate Trump like share of the vote in the large suburban and exurban counties around I-4, things could get very tight, very quickly.” 

So, let’s break that statement into two buckets – Dem opportunities for growth – and the large suburban and exurban counties around I-4, starting with the former first.

If we go back and look at the previous two Governor’s races, the two parties pretty much matched the other in their base counties.  In 2010, Democrats won their base markets by 33,840 more than the GOP did, and in 2014, the margin was 14,360.   Fast forward to 2018, and Andrew Gillum won the base Democratic markets by 109,809 more votes than DeSantis won the base Republican markets. 

How did Gillum expand the Democratic advantage in the base markets?   One word:  Miami.

In fact, if you add up the three non-Miami Democratic markets, Gillum and Crist won them by almost the same margin (102,390 for Gillum, 102,698 for Crist), but Gillum won the Miami market by some 143K more votes than Crist did.

In fact, the same dynamic played out for DeSantis– outside of Fort Myers, he won the other base Republican markets by almost exactly what Scott won them by, but because Gillum was able keep him in check elsewhere, particularly in the Jacksonville market, DeSantis’ growth in the GOP market came nowhere near matching Gillum’s in his. 

*There is an argument that DeSantis did a good job keeping the Miami, particularly Dade margins, from being even larger, but that is for a longer look at Miami.

So how did DeSantis win?  The second bucket of this exercise, which is the same way Trump did.  Literally, exactly the same way.

As I sat in under the press tent at the Gillum Election Night Party, trying to make my rain-soaked laptop work, I felt the same sense of doom as I felt in 2016 -- twice.  First when the Pasco absentees came in, then around 7:50pm, when it became clear the Gillum/Nelson leads were not good enough to overcome the likely GOP advantage from the counties that would report at 8:00 EST, when the Central Time Zone polls closed.  The exurban counties in I-4 had done it again.

We know that Democrats grew their margins – significantly, in the places where my team historically runs up the score – and more than the GOP did in their traditional markets. But then we get to I-4.  Gillum lost the I-4 markets by 146K votes, or just under 70K more votes than Crist did.  Nelson lost the markets by slightly less – 138K or so votes.  Those margins more than offset the gains elsewhere and added up to a loss. 

But that is not the end of the story – and here is where the 2016 comparison sets in – just like Clinton, Gillum ran up new high-water mark margins in the urban areas, particularly around Orlando.  In total, Gillum won the urban counties of I-4 by 120,000 more votes than Crist did – and this is despite winning Pinellas County by some 30,000 votes less than Crist (the Crist margins in Pinellas were much more about Crist than they were about Democratic party performance).  However, where Crist lost the suburban and exurban counties around I-4 by about 157K votes, Gillum lost them by 355K.

Or more simply:  the counties around the urban I-4 counties delivered DeSantis with more of an increased margin than the Miami media market delivered for Gillum.  In a race where most everything else stayed the same – that made the difference.

Here is another way to look at it:

If you look at 2014, the Scott margin of victory pretty much matched his win in the Orlando media market, with his margins from North Florida, plus Tampa and Fort Myers almost exactly balancing out what Crist won South Florida.  Guess what happened again?  Literally the exact same thing. 

For Democrats, the Orlando math is a good way to highlight the problem – it is very hard to win a pure turnout fight.  When you look at 2018, the margins in urban Orlando were spectacular, and just like on Election Night in 2008, looked almost unmatchable.  But the problem for Democrats – the GOP margins everywhere else grew too, in some cases by a lot more, and cancelled out the gains.   For example, Gillum won Orange County by 85K more votes than Crist did – but if you add up the six republican counties in the Orlando market, he lost them by about 84K more votes than Crist.

Broadening out to the two markets combined, just like Clinton, Gillum won the I-4 urban counties by more votes than Obama did in 2012.  But whereas Clinton lost the non-urban I-4 counties by nearly 450K, and Gillum by 355K, Obama lost them by under 220K votes.  In fact, to prove the point of how important it is for Democrats to be more competitive in these counties, had Obama in 2012 lost the non-urban I-4 counties by as much as Gillum, we would have lost Florida that year.  

Nothing demonstrates this shift more than Volusia County, a place Obama won in 2008, lost by about 3K votes in 2012, and where both Nelson and Gillum lost by more than 22K votes – or the three counties north of Tampa (Pasco, Hernando, and Citrus), where Obama lost by 23K votes in 2008, 37K votes in 2012, but both Gillum and Nelson lost by more than 75K votes.

And here is where my frustration sets in – and not with either campaign – but the mindset generally of approaching the state, this idea that Florida can be won entirely in a few corners, or that Florida is just a turnout state.  Look at the difference between the Ag Commissioner’s race, and the Governor’s race.  In the Ag Commissioner’s race, the Democratic candidate, Nikki Fried, had better margins in 38 counties compared to the Governor’s race, including 33 that both candidates lost.  In other words, losing by a little less in a lot of places added up to the difference between winning by a little, and losing by a little.

This piece is not a criticism of any campaign.  God knows I’ve been on enough conference calls to know campaigns must make hard decisions, and often those decisions, particularly the ones Nelson often faced against a far better financed opponent, were a choice between two sub-prime options -- and that all of those decisions look easier in hindsight, and when you are on the outside.   And to their credit – especially Mayor Gillum, the campaigns did spend a lot of time in some of these communities. 

Instead, I lay this out to answer the question I’ve gotten a lot this week: what can we do differently?  From my view, the answer today is the same as it was when I got this question after Bush beat Kerry in Florida – you can’t take on these kinds of margins in Republican counties and hope to make it up elsewhere.  Sure, you might get a win here or there, but over time, it is just a losing proposition.  And here’s the thing – the same math exists in 2020, and in 2022 – in other words, getting right up to the edge of winning, unless my side is willing to drive a conversation about the math problem that we have. 

There are a lot of things to fix, but step one is voter registration.  In 2008, when our campaign shut down, Democrats had a nearly 700K advantage in voter registration.  Today it is just over 250K.  We need a sustained and permanent voter registration effort, which by its own nature, will keep us to remain engaged in the types of emerging communities where we are growing – as well force us to engage in many communities where we have not.   

I have a few pieces I will work on over the holidays – the aforementioned one on why I think the public polling continues to be a mess in Florida, as well as some more specific deep dives into individual markets. 

Thanks again for reading.  I really do appreciate it.  Happy Thanksgiving.

PS -- At least the Noles stomped the Gators in basketball on Election Night.  :-)

8 Days Out -- Florida Memo

To:       People who can’t stand Mondays.  Everyone else stop reading.

From:   Steve Schale

Re:       8 days out

It finally cooled off in Florida, but the voting got hot.  As of this morning: 2,726,392

This breaks down:

Republicans: 1,151,593 (42.3)

Democrats: 1,092,547 (40.1)

NPA/Minor: 482,252 (17.7)

Republican edge is 59,046 (+2.2%)

Yesterday, we were at 2,580,347, with the GOP holding an edge of 70,415 votes (+2.7%).

On Saturday, it was 2,316,413, with the GOP edge at 74,334 (+2.2)

 Democrats made up all the ground they lost late last weekend, winning the weekend vote by roughly 15,500, or just under 4%.  Most of that came yesterday, when Democrats won the day by 11K votes. My home team had a very good weekend.

 Before my Democratic friends on twitter get too excited, there wasn’t much in the way of vote by vote by mail ballots, so unless the 118K or so more Democrats than Republicans who hold an absentee ballot #BringItToThePostOffice, the GOP lead will likely bounce back a bit tomorrow morning when the weekend absentees get added into the mix. 

For comparison, in 2014, right at 2.2 million voters had voted, Republicans had about a 140,000-ballot lead at this point – and led by around 6.4%.  In 2018, the GOP lead was about 9K votes at this point out of 4 million votes.  It was basically tied.

Republicans lead for one reason, and one reason only: Democratic return rates for vote by mail are lagging Republican rates – by seven points in terms of the rate of return. Right now, statewide the return rate is about 49% -- though given what is currently sitting in the mailboxes at Supervisors offices, there is no question more than 50% of Floridians who requested a ballot have mailed it back.  Again, those numbers update in the morning.

Republicans have now returned 54.4% of all their requested ballots, Democrats 47.6%, and NPA’s 42.5.  Statewide, the return rate is 36%. 

In total, just over 3.42 million ballots have been requested – again far more than 2014, and more than 2016. 

Here is what is remaining:

Democratic unreturned ballots: 722,498

Republican unreturned ballots: 604,885

NPA unreturned ballots: 412,736

The electorate is continuing to trend more diverse.  Not including Sunday’s data, which will make these numbers even more diverse, the electorate looks like this (again thru Saturday):  73% White, 10.5% Black, 11.7% Hispanic.  Compare this to Thursday last week, when the electorate was 75% White, 11.5% Hispanic, and 8.5% Black, though as in-person early voting, the electorate is trending more diverse.  Keep in mind, vote-by-mail in Florida tends to be far more white than the final electorate. 

That being said, when looking at the ethnicity of who is left to vote, it is clear that Black turnout is rounding into shape – if just the people who voted in 2014 show up to vote between now and Election Day, the Black (reminder, Black voters in Florida include African American, Caribbean, and some Hispanic) vote will land at about 12.5%.  And again, that is if no one new shows up.  I suspect the Black share will end up right around the Black share of total voter registration, which is just over 13.

If there is a concern I have about turnout from my party perspective – where as the Black share of the electorate has been trending up, Hispanic has been pretty flat.  Outside of Cuban Republicans, Hispanics tend to vote later, and more on Election Day, but this is something to watch this week and into next weekend.

Looking at the electorate that has voted, and the electorate left to vote, there is good news and bad news for my home team.

In terms of non-2014 votes, slightly more than 30% of the electorate did not vote in 2014.   Those voters are younger (30% under 50 – and 17% under 35 compared to 22% under 50 and 8% under 35 for all early voters), more Democratic (Dems are +4%), and more diverse – particularly more Hispanic. 

In terms of people who 2014 voters who have not voted, there are about 200,000 more Republicans. Dems make some of that up if the trends with lower propensity voters keep up, but not all of it.  In other words, after you read this memo, if you are for Nelson and Gillum, go turn out some voters.

In terms of the vote by media market, it is starting to look like Florida.  The two markets most impacted by the storm: Panama City and Tallahassee, are still down.  Miami, as a share of the electorate, continues to grow – and while this will likely flatline or drop a bit as some other areas even out, it is well ahead of where it was at this point in 2014 and 2016.   Orlando, arguably the most important market this cycle, continues to be very competitive – and robust in terms of turn out.  Fort Myers, after blowing up in early vote by mail, is coming back to earth.  Tampa looks like Tampa.

I looked at 2018 versus 2014 by county margins, there are a lot of high points for my home team:

This data reads this way 2014 margin -- 2018 margin; (2014 share -- 2018 share)

Broward: 36,893 -- 74,654 (57-27 -- 58-24)

Dade: -31 -- 22,153 (41-41 -- 44-35)

Orange: 4,611 -- 23,619 (43-39 -- 49-33)

Hillsborough: -1,584 -- 9,556 (40-42 -- 44-39)

DUUUVAL: -8,310 -- 472 (38-50 -- 44-43)

Alachua (UF): 3,989 -- 11,255 (53-33 -- 58-28)

And in the swing counties:

Seminole: -9,032 -- -3,728 (32-50 -- 37-43)

Pinellas: -7,921 -- -1,855 (37-43 -- 40-41)

St. Lucie: 748 -- 2,853 (41-39 -- 44-38)

What is interesting, and again is good news – even in many of the bigger GOP counties where they have a higher margin today than four years ago, Democratic turnout is keeping it in check.  For example:

In Lee (Fort Myers), Sumter (Villages), Collier (Naples), St. Johns, Clay (near Jax), while the GOP margin is higher than it was four years ago, the partisan share of vote difference is closer for the Democrats.  Take the aforementioned St. Johns County, one of the most Republican counties in the state.  Republicans have a 3,758 bigger vote margin, but the model has gone from 63-23 R in 2014 to 58-28 in 2018.   Winning Florida for my side is all about those little shifts.

One last little data point, then off to work.  Right now, statewide turnout is about 20.5%.  Among Republicans, it is 24.6%, and among Democrats its 22.1% (NPA is at 13%).  Republican turnout rates are higher in 61 of 67 counties.  I point this out because while I do believe that there is a lot of data from the weekend that looks good, Democrats keep in mind that Republicans are blowing out turnout as well.  More people are voting overall – and there are probably at least 4.5 million more people to vote – and if only the most certain show up, which they will, the GOP will have a solid advantage in turnout. 

I feel better about where my side is today than I did last week, but I don’t feel great.  This still feels closer than the polls, and while I absolutely believe NPA voters will decide it – as they typically do in Florida, how close things are from a partisan perspective dictates by how much our side has to win the NPA vote. 

And while it may be a bye week for my hapless Jaguars, it is far from a bye week for those of you all who want to bring it home.

One last note:  Last week, my side lost one of its brightest rising stars.  Tyrone Gayle was a kid from Jacksonville – we went to the same high school (though he was much younger) and took his charge to be a change agent seriously.  In his short 30 years on this planet, he touched more people than most of us could in a lifetime.   He battled stage 4 cancer for more than two years, and while most of us bitch about having a cold, Tyrone went through treatment while still during a Presidential campaign, never losing his spirit.    A colleague of him said: “Tyrone could fly, but that was never enough for him – he wanted us all to fly with him, so he elevated every person he touched, lifted each and every one of us.  His body failed him last night, but his spirit soars on, flying above us, forever lifting us up.”

While I can’t say we were all that close, he was my friend & fellow hopelessly optimistic Jaguars fan -- and more importantly, I was just an admirer and fan of his, a fellow EHS and Duval kid who did good, and one whose limitless potential was sadly cut short.  F Cancer.  #GayleNation

Florida 2018 15 days out -- It is Early Voting Time!

To:       People who love democracy and dogs.

From:  Steve Schale

Re:       15 Days out and the Jags suck again.

By the time you read this memo, early voting will have begun in Florida, as the polls open as Americans come to grips with one simple fact:  The Jaguars are terrible again.  There is a decent chance that by the time we get to week two of early voting, the Jaguars will be holding open tryouts at early voting sites. 

As we enter early voting, there have been 930.657 vote by mail ballots returned. 

Republican ballots 408,696 (43.9%)

Democratic ballots: 357,165 (38.4%)

NPA ballots: 164,796 (17.7%)

Total GOP advantage:  51.531 (5.54%)

Last week we saw steady days of 100,000 or more ballots processed daily, with Republicans increasing their advantage by a few thousand ballots every day. 

Saturday morning GOP advantage: 50,399 (+5.75%)

And for comparison purposes, 15 days out in 2014, the election looked like this:

Total ballots returned (2014): 1,472,104

Total Republican advantage:  138,385 (+11.5%)

For a 2016 comparison, Democrats trailed by about 20,000 ballots going into the first day of early voting.

Assuming turnout at 7,000,000 voters, roughly 13.3 % of the potential total turnout is in. 

To give some comparison: nearly 20% of the total final turnout had voted in 2014 before early voting started.   In 2016, it was closer to 13%. 

Just to stress one point – this time just for my Democratic friends:  There are 115,880 more Democratic ballots sitting on kitchen tables or in piles by the front door than there are Republican ballots.   

In total, 28.69% of all requested ballots have been returned, with Republicans returning 32.59 % of their ballots, Democrats 27.09%, and NPA returning 24.55%

I also had a chance yesterday to take my first look at the electorate, and it looks like the earliest vote by mail universes tend to look:  Republican, white, and heavily Tampa/Fort Myers.

White voters make up about 78% of all the vote by mail ballots returned so far.  About 80% of all ballot returners voted in 2014.  The new voters – or those who didn’t vote in 2014 are basically a wash.  In other words, among the early ballot returners, there isn’t a surge of unlikely voters on either side.

Based on return rates, I’d argue this is decent news for Democrats – and here is why:  the highest returning counties for Republicans are in some of the places Trump surged.  If those returns were being driven by the new Trump Republicans who showed up in 2016, we’d see a bigger chunk of non-2014 voters showing up in those returns – but there is nothing abnormal.  As I told a buddy of mine Sunday night, the people you’d expect to vote are the ones who are voting. 

Not that this is an excuse for you 115K or so more Democrats who have a ballot somewhere in the pile under a bunch of catalogs you have no clue why you get.

The other thing that is interesting – the one group that is voting:  women, specifically, Democratic women.  In fact, the single largest gender subgroup who has voted are Democratic women.  Women are about 54.5% of all voters so far.  Democratic women alone are over 23% of all voters so far.   Again, it is important to remember that we are only talking about 13% of the total likely electorate, but it is nonetheless, interesting.

But while I think these are good signs for my side, there are warning signs entering early voting:  namely, in the places where DeSantis and Scott need to grow from their 2014 margins, people are generally voting, though worth noting, they are voting across party lines.  Take Hernando County, a place where Trump’s vote share was 15 points higher than Scott in 2014, a full 44.2% of Republicans who have requested a ballot have returned their ballot – though among Democrats, the number is 40.9%, still well above the Democratic average.

On flipside, places we need people to vote to grow from our 2014 margins, voting has been sluggish.  Just 17.4% of Democratic ballot requesters in Dade, and 25.75% in Orange have returned their ballots, both below the party’s state average. 

Now these things could all change after a week of early voting, but if someone asked me what I am most worried about today as a Democrat, that is what I am most worried about.   Keep in mind, I am a worrier, and I am not overly concerned – but I would like to see some correction over the next week.

33% of early absentee returners are in the Tampa media market, and another 13% are in Fort Myers.  Optimistically, these two markets will top out around 32% combined after all ballots are cast through election day.

On the flipside, southeast Florida is behind what it will look like after election day.  The Miami and Palm Beach markets, which should end up somewhere around 28% of the statewide vote, currently make up about 22% of early vote by mail returns. 

Orlando is about where it should be, and North Florida is well below where it will be by election day, in part because this market tends to be a little more Election Day and in-person early focused, and because Hurricane Michael has disrupted return rates in a handful of counties in the Tallahassee and Panama City media markets.

Going forward, voting will be fast and furious.  We should easily see 2.5-3 million Floridians vote in the next two weeks, so the electorate will begin to mold into shape.  The electorate will get more diverse, it will balance out from a partisan standpoint, and it will start to look more normal in terms of geographic distribution.  There isn’t a whole lot so far that leads me to think we are headed to anything other than a pretty close election, but let’s see how the week goes.

We will see who ends up starting next week for the Jaguars, who thankfully go to London to play Paul Kane’s Eagles, a team that has looked equally disappointing.  But at least if that game is going to suck, there will be a week’s worth of early voting to analyze instead – that and trying to figure out how to get from second to first in my fantasy NASCAR league.  Priorities people. Priorities.

Until tomorrow.

Florida 2018 Memo- Josh Gibson (20) Days until Election Day

Dear Friends, Fellow Dog Lovers, and Casual Twitter Followers:

We are 20 days out from the start of Florida State’s basketball season, and since that 9:00 PM eastern standard time game tip happens to fall one hour after the midterm polls close in the central time zone in Florida, that means it is election memo time!

A lot has happened in the world since the last memo in 2016.  We had a solar eclipse.  Florida State made it to the Elite 8.  Our President can now text us on a regular basis, and the Jacksonville Jaguars went to the playoffs.

This point is important.  Bear with me.

The last time a non-incumbent Democrat won statewide won in Florida was 2008.  His name was Barack Obama.  The season before, the Jaguars, led by quarterback David Garrard, went to the playoffs.  In the playoffs they beat the Steelers on the road, before losing to the Patriots in the playoffs.

Fast forward to 2018.  Since the primary, every single poll has shown the Democrats’ non-incumbent candidate for Governor ahead:  Andrew Gillum.  And yes – the Jaguars last season went to the playoffs, beat the Steeles on the road, then lost to the Patriots. 

Just saying.  

This first memo isn’t going to be super long.  For a little background, I tend to think by writing, so these memos are the product of me processing the data that is before us, so as we have more and more interesting data, the length of these memos are going to get longer. Right now, the data is still to thin to mean much. 

Secondly, as you know, my region of Florida was just rocked by one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in American history.  By rocked, I mean there are areas that are functionally unrecognizable, so like many others - this hack is trying to spend what free time he has pitching in, meaning in short term, less time for writing and cranking through the voter file.  Once we get more votes – and I get more time, there will be more depth to the analysis. 

So, with that, here we go.

As of this morning, there are 554,350 ballots vote by mail ballots returned. 

Republican ballots 247,350 (44.65%)

Democratic ballots: 207,171 (37.37%)

NPA ballots: 99,649 (17.98%)

Subject to change, I am starting my estimated turnout at 7,000,000 voters, meaning roughly 8% of the potential total turnout is in.  That number could move up as we see more ballots returned.

In total, there have been 3,128,708 ballots requested.  Democrats have a 73,674 edge in total requests, meaning Democrats have 114,033 more ballots yet to be returned.  In total, Republicans have returned 20.5% of their ballots, Democrats 16.2% of theirs, and NPA 15.5% of theirs. 

*Quick aside – before you all start sending me twitter DMs, for ease of my process, NPA stands for people who are No Party Affiliates.  I also add in all the minor parties, meaning NPA in my data is anyone who isn’t a Republican or Democrat. 

Compared to this day in the election (20 days out) in 2014, two things stand out.  One:  far fewer ballots have been returned.  At this point, just under 870,000 ballots had been returned.  And secondly, the Republicans, while leading now, were leading by considerably more in 2014.  In fact, the GOP advantage was about 13.6% on Day 20 in 2014, or roughly 119,000 ballots.   In 2014, Republicans went into Election Day with a 90,000 voter advantage -- it is highly unlikely that will be the case this year.

I don’t think the decreased number of this ballots means anything – today.  In most places, people have only had their ballots about a week, and while it isn’t a huge impact on the total number, there are places where the storm has kept counties from functioning.  I suspect this number will catch up over the next week.

Couple of notes:

The GOP advantage is being driven by very robust return rates in southwest Florida – basically the Fort Myers media market.  This is the heart of the Republican base, and it was an area that was both robust for Scott in 2014, and Trump in 2016.   How important is this area for Republicans:  while it is less than 7% of the statewide vote, it will account for about 8.5% of the Republican vote.

Counties such as Collier (Naples), and Lee (Fort Myers) have seen Republican ballot return rates at 38 and 33% respectively, compared to 20% statewide.  This gives the GOP nearly a 22,000-voter lead just in these two counties – accounting for 54% of their total statewide lead. In fact, Lee and Collier alone account for 16% of all the GOP ballots returned to date. 

In fact, over 49.5% of the total ballot returns have come from the Tampa media market (34% of state total) and the Fort Myers (15.5% of state total) media market.  This number will probably land around 32% once all ballots are cast.  In terms of Tampa, a few counties I want to keep an eye on.

First Pinellas (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) – Pinellas voted for Obama twice, both Sink and Crist, and then Trump.  It is also a county that is predominately vote by mail, with a slight edge to the GOP in terms of registered voters.

Right now, Democrats have about a 2,000-ballot lead in ballots mailed out – about 39.3% to 39%, out of the 275,000 total VBM ballots.  But in terms of returns, the GOP leads by about 5%, or about 2K votes.  Not surprising:  Republicans tend to be better VBM voters, but as a Democrat, I would like to see this tick up.

I also want to keep an eye on Pasco.  Pasco is a county just north of Pinellas and Hillsborough (Tampa).  It will go Republican, though both Obama (in 08 and 12), and Crist, kept it competitive.  That changed with Trump who won the county by 37K more votes than Romney did in 2012.  In fact, that number is higher than the number of every county in North Florida, combined.  For DeSantis, he will want Pasco to look more like it did for Trump than it did for Scott in 2014, or Romney in 2012.

Right now, there is robust activity on both sides.  Republicans have about a 4% edge in all ballots mailed, but about a 5.3% edge in ballots returned, however, both parties have seen about a quarter of their ballots returned.  This is also a place where we saw a tremendous GOP turnout edge on Election Day, so will need to track who is actually voting by mail here going forward.  Overall, the Tampa market is pretty close to where it should be, and definitely better than this point in 2014.

The only media market in Florida that is pretty much where it should be is Orlando, which makes up about 20.5% of the ballots cast so far, and will be right around there in terms of its share of the state, with Republicans carrying a slight lead in ballots returned, again, right where it should be (actually, probably a little better than it should be for Dems). 

On flipside, the big Democratic counties in Southeast Florida, specifically Dade and Broward, tend to be more early voting focused, though we’d still like to see stronger return rates.  The Miami media market is now at about 12% of all ballots returned, and by Election Day, it should be 17-18%.  Right now, Dade is at 8% return for Democrats, and Broward at 12%.  Nothing to panic about, because it is early, but something to watch.  

The counties where Republicans are returning their ballots the fastest (% of ballots returned compared to requested):

Collier (Naples):  37.7%

Sumter (Villages): 35.2%

Charlotte (Cape Coral): 34.5%

Hernando (North of Tampa): 33.2%

Lee (Fort Myers):  32.4%

The counties where the Democrats are returning the fastest:

Sumter: 37.0% (Yes, Democrats are returning faster in Villages than Republicans)

Charlotte: 33.5%

Collier: 31.5%

Sarasota: 30.9%

Martin (Stuart): 29.5%

One quick note here:  Sarasota.  Sarasota tends to be an indicator for Democrats of good things.  When Dems overperform in Sarasota, they tend to win – Crist 2014 being the exception to the rule.  Sarasota is a GOP-leaning county, but with several moderate pockets.  Right now in Sarasota, Democrats are not only returning ballots faster than Republicans as a percentage – more Democrats have actually voted than Republicans.  I will watch this going forward.

All in all, we have a long way to go, and at this point, both sides have a lot to hang their hat on:  Republicans are seeing turnout where they want to see it, and Democrats are seeing better overall return rates than four years ago, leading to a much closer margin than existed on day 20 in 2014.

I am going to try to do a little note each day this week.  Again, I have not had time to spend any real quality time looking at the voter file to provide more context to these numbers, and hope to do that later in the week, or on Friday.

In the meantime, two things: If there are questions you’d like to me to track in these, drop me a note, and if you have any questions, about what is in here, please let me know.

Steve

PS – While the Patriots won the AFC Championship game, which is excellent news for Andrew Gillum’s chances, let the record reflect:  Myles Jack Wasn’t Down. 

The Politics of Hurricanes

Like today, writing this blog while Hurricane Michael passes just to our west, when you live in Florida, hurricanes are just part of life.  

For me, growing up in a family in the marina business in St. Augustine, dealing with these things became part of my DNA.  I remember as a kid, we’d track these storms on hurricane charts, with the full knowledge that the family business was in the hands of Mother Nature – as it remains today. In 2016, in the middle of the presidential campaign, I was back in St. Augustine, working the docks at the family marina during Hurricane Matthew with my stepfather.

That is a small example of how politics intersects with hurricanes.   From late summer through October, tropical weather is hardly ever not threatening Florida, and every two years, that reality for Florida families runs head first into the electoral calendar.    Traditionally here, candidates err on the side of caution, choosing to stand down while Floridians deal with these storms.  Occasionally, candidates try to thread the needle and get away with a little politics in the eye of the storm, and the way candidates manage these moments often becomes the center of debates. That’s what’s happened this week in the Governor’s race, with Ron DeSantis’s decision to run negative ads against Andrew Gillum – on the issue of storm recovery – in the markets being hit by the storm.

My first experience of managing the politics of a natural disaster happened in 1998, a year that northeast Florida was impacted by some of the most serious wildfires in state history, and the legislative district I worked in was largely ground zero.   Today, if you drive down I-95 through Flagler County, it is still noticeable how the trees through the City of Palm Coast are different than the trees further north, and the trees further south.   Summer wildfires that year burned hundreds of homes, tens of thousands of acres, and cost lives.  It was all hands-on deck for anyone elected, or working for an elected – but my situation was different for two reasons:   my boss represented the most Republican seat held by a Democrat in the Legislature – and we were target #1 of the GOP – and my boss was a member of the Florida National Guard – and got called to active duty for several weeks – in the midst of our re-election.

Being a bull-headed and opportunistic 24-year-old hack, and with a boss literally wearing the uniform of his nation to help manage the fires, my instincts said “this is an opportunity and we must take advantage of it” – but it was my boss, Doug Wiles, older and much wiser, who reminded me that if we just kept our heads down and did our jobs, voters would remember.  He was right.  In a district Jeb Bush won by like 15 points, we won re-election by a point – less than 1,000 votes – thanks entirely to the large margin we won in Palm Coast.

In 2008, I faced it at a different level.   Tropical Storm Fay was off the coast of Florida and looking like it could become a hurricane.  We were smack in the middle of ramping up our field operations and we had only been on TV a few weeks – and were still trailing McCain.  Suddenly we were faced with decisions:  Do we stay on TV?  What do we do with our field staff?  After thinking about it a bit, the decision became clear:  shutting it down for 36 hours wasn’t going to cost us the race, plus at a time when people were worried about their families and property, the last thing they wanted to do is see our ads or hear from our volunteers.  The same day, John McCain cancelled a major fundraiser in Miami.  Both sides decided we could punt our fight a few days down the road, and let people get through the storm.

I get these decisions aren’t always black and white.  Incumbents have legitimate jobs to do -- for example, both Rick Scott and Andrew Gillum have spent a lot of time on TV this week, and sure, while they benefit from the exposure, it is also their job.

Challengers want to be seen ready to lead, or if nothing else, willing to be helpful.    Take the question John Kerry faced in 2004 after Hurricane Charley rocked pretty much everything from Port Charlotte across the state to Daytona Beach – do you travel to the damaged areas to lend support, even if it is just moral support, at the risk of just getting in the way?  Or do you wait, and face criticism of not caring enough to show up?  That same year, politics and elections literally stranded me in South Florida, where when the airports closed, I ended up with a 15 hour ride up the Reagan to get home after a 04 campaign meeting.  Trust me, that will give you a new perspective on what people go through to get out of harm's way.

Most campaigns make the same decision that most real people make in these storms:  shut it down and ride it out, choosing caution over politics.   As my Republican friend, former Bush and Romney Florida advisor Brett Doster, said about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 as the state was facing the aforementioned Hurricane Matthew: “The two candidates are going to have to be very careful because there’s a tremendous risk if it looks like they are politicizing it (the storm) in the least.”   Or as Jeb Bush said today: “Candidates should shut down ads in impacted areas – the exclusive focus needs to be be on preparing, rescuing, and recovering.”

While Rick Scott is pushing that edge, running an ad touting his hurricane recovery leadership – Ron DeSantis' decision to run negative going after Mayor Gillum on the issue of hurricanes during a hurricane…in a town being battered by a hurricane is a new standard -- and not one we should hope to repeat.

In a campaign, you can only control the things you can control.  Challenges control that their opponents are incumbents thrust into high profile moments, in this case 27 days out, but they can control what their own campaigns do.  I suspect that DeSantis’ decision to break convention and run negative ads in the markets impacted by the storm during the hurricane is mostly a function of the fact he’s trailed in every single poll taken since the primary, and the clock is starting to run out.  

The reality is there's no easy way to measure what all of this means.  In a state like Florida where elections are decided in the margins, everything matters, and nothing matters.  Rick Scott rebuilt his image through hurricane response, yet still trails Bill Nelson in many recent polls out there.  Republicans have attacked Andrew Gillum on hurricanes, yet the Mayor has led every single public poll since the primary.

In the end, as Doug Wiles said to me during those fires, the only thing that matters in a hurricane is doing the right thing and taking care of people --- and that is why most campaigns make the decision to stand down.  As my grandmother would say, “this too will pass” and the time for politics will return, quickly.

 Will DeSantis pay a political price for breaking this tradition?  Does anyone think if he loses it will be because he chose to run negative ads during a natural disaster?   Or on the flip side, will his decision to run negative ads during the storm thrust him to victory?  The answer three is surely no.  I don’t think any candidate will win or lose their race solely because of this event.  But that is a different question than should he have pulled his ads earlier in the week?  The answer to that, at least from this guy, at least in the markets where storm was coming, is yes.

I pray everyone who was near the storm has made it through safely.  The pictures from the coast are really terrifying, but if there is one thing I know about this part of the state:  it is resilient, and it is a community.  Our neighbors who were most directly impacted by the fury of Michael will recover, and may God Bless them -- and may we all support them -- as they work in the coming weeks and months to put their lives back together.

Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Florida, But Were Afraid to Ask -- v.2018

So what is Florida?

10 media markets – many big enough to be battleground states (11 if you count Holmes being in the Dothan DMA)

Nearly 21 million Florida Women and Florida Men.

13 million registered voters.

7-8 million voters in 2018.

A fast growing and diverse Hispanic population.

A fast growing Caribbean population.

Last two Governor’s races decided by one point.  Last two Presidentials decided by a point.

An NFL team that was one blown call away from the Super Bowl.

Florida. Florida. Florida.

For regular readers of my semi-regular blog, this piece is a bit of an update from a piece I wrote in 2016.  You can read that one here.

The goal of the piece is to give outsiders, and folks generally interested in this place a bit of a baseline – a way to think about Florida, and some sense about how the place ticks.

Every political journalist asks the same question:  what is the single key to winning it?  (ok, jonathan martin first asks where to get good bbq).

The secret, as my friend Kevin Sweeny would say, is there is no secret.   The place is geographically huge, almost prohibitively expensive, exceptionally diverse in many ways, with huge chunks of voters who cancel each other out.  It is a place, that structurally, wants to be hyper competitive.  Take the Senate race – I’ve argued for nearly a year that despite what the polls say, both Bill Nelson and Rick Scott have a floor of 47 or 48%.  Both parties have huge and loyal bases – neither has a clear base path to 50%.  A handful of voters decide every election – and within that cohort one will find very few commonalties.    The place is both fascinating, and maddening. 

So, what makes it tick?  Why are the politics like they are?  And at a more basic level, what exactly is Florida?

Florida is a state, not a place.

Most states are places. Think about Texas, or even a state like Iowa, there is a sense of place to it, a commonality of experience – or as a marketer might say, an identifiable brand. Most states have it. Florida really doesn’t, that is, outside of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Florida isn’t a place in the same sense. It is a political circle, drawing 20 million people from vast, and I mean vast experiences and cultures into one spot. And almost everyone here has come from somewhere else.  When friends of mine joke about Florida Man, I often will paraphrase something noted American politico Christine O'Donnell once said:  "We are not a witch - we are nothing that you think - We are You."  Florida tends to reflect the nation, not stand out from it.

When I give talks about Florida, I often tell folks to think of our state as the new Ellis Island, except our ships come as cars and planes, from inside the borders of the country, and outside.  The same dream that drove people to come to America for centuries drive people to Florida today

Between now and 2030, Florida will add as many as 5 million more residents, grow to as much as 30% Hispanic, with a total population of well more than 50% coming from what are typically considered ethnic minorities.

The old saying about Florida is you go north to go south. North Florida feels like the traditional south, large rural areas, conservative towns like Jacksonville and Pensacola, liberal college towns, etc., while the rest of the state feels like wherever it came from. Go to Tampa, or most anywhere on the west coast, and there is more of a Midwestern feel – as most who got there, came down the I-75 corridor.  Go to a Chicago Bears/Tampa Bay Bucs game these days, and you might wonder who the home team is. 

Travel down the east coast and you can feel more northeastern influences, homage to the I-95 corridor and before that, the Flagler's railroad that brought them here.   Stay to the coastal side of the interstate, and the place is busy, almost one continuous city that goes on for hundreds of miles up and down the coastline.  Go to the interior of the interstates, and with the exception of Orlando – which is its own unique culture, the place is still very much Old Florida, with large expanses of agriculture and open space.

Then there is Miami-Dade, easily one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. 87% of the population is non-white (meaning non-Hispanic white), and that number is growing. It is really its own city-state, much more like a Hong Kong, or a Singapore, than it is a city within a state.

Politically, all these places basically cancel each other out. The simple way to think about Florida is North Florida being Republican, South Florida being Democratic, and the state balancing along I-4 – though as this piece tries to show, it is a lot more nuanced.  However, it is true that Florida tends to be like a self-correcting scale – for every Democratic trend, there seems to be an equal, and countervailing Republican trend, which keeps the state exceptionally competitive – and while there definitely is a bit of a north/south split – these trends are playing out all over the state. 

This piece is long (and could be 2-3x longer) – and again, it covers a lot of the same turf as I covered in the similar piece in 2016, but hopefully, if you choose to follow my memos throughout the cycle, it will give some context to the places you will hear me talk about.    Also, while I recognize there are five statewide races on the ballot, for purposes of this, I will use Governor’s race numbers from 2010 and 2014 – for several reasons:  1. It is the cleanest comparison, and 2. Scott is on the ballot again in 2018.

So let’s get started.

People look at Florida different ways – I’ve settled on it being home to 5 states. 

North Florida

Home to 3.5 million residents, and close to 19% of the vote in a midterm, think of North Florida as the I-10 corridor, running from Jacksonville to Pensacola, with the addition of Gainesville. It has the lowest Hispanic and highest African American percentages but is over 2/3rds white. The region is slightly bigger in population than Iowa.

The distance between Pensacola and Jacksonville is roughly 360 miles, along a fairly sparse I-10, home to America's #1 truck stop, the Busy Bee at the Live Oak halfway point. Rural north Florida feels much more like Georgia or Alabama than the Florida that most people think of. While the population is growing along the coasts, creating red counties that are just getting redder, the reality is population in this part of the state is stagnant compared to the rest of the state. 

Florida’s two dry counties are located here, as are two of its largest universities, as well as the seat of state government. In addition, the region is book-ended by two of the oldest cities in America: St. Augustine and Pensacola. Both ends of north Florida have a large military presence, as well as significant acres of state and national forests.  America’s team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, also calls the region home, as does the leading college men's and women's basketball programs in Florida:  the Florida State Seminoles, and the school that can beat neither: The University of Florida.  It is also home to the state's public HBCU, Florida A&M University, also the alma mater of the Democratic nominee, Andrew Gillum.  

It is the most conservative part of the state, though in midterms, can bounce around.  For example, Scott won the region by 13 points, or about 139,000 votes in 2010 – but four years later, he grew his margin to nearly 22 points, winning by 246,000 votes.  Keeping in mind his statewide win margins were virtually identical in 2010 and 2014, Scott’s growth in North Florida is the primary reason he was re-elected.    And while there is room to grow for DeSantis (and Scott) from his 2010 numbers, a lot of that room is in places with very small numbers of voters.  Moreover, Scott’s margin of 22 points across North Florida was higher than Trump (19), meaning DeSantis will need to exceed Trump – and possibly even Scott to hit his vote goals.

In the past, Bill Nelson has done very well here for a Democrat, but this race is different.  It is hard to imagine a scenario where he does as well here as in the past – though it isn’t hard to imagine him doing better than the average Democrat, and in a race likely decided by 100,000 votes or less, this will matter.

That being said, a Nelson win would be keeping Scott between his 2010 and 2014 numbers, where for DeSantis, it is hard to see him winning without at least matching Scott in 2014, if not growing further.   For Scott, few places are as important to him as the Jacksonville market – home to 8.7% of the vote, it provided over 11% of his vote in 2014.  If Nelson takes some of that away, Scott’s path gets difficult, quickly.

There are also places to watch for Gillum.  There is a significant African American population in Duval which helped propel both Obama and Clinton to stronger than typical performances there, as well as in Pensacola, and around Tallahassee.  Add the significant student populations in Gainesville (UF), Tallahassee (FAMU, FSU), and Jacksonville (UNF, JU, Edward Waters), and there is definite room for him to grow.  Even marginal increases in turnout here significantly change the GOP math for winning.  I think he could very well replicate the Obama/Clinton numbers in Duval.  In fact, I’ll bet dinner to the first person willing to take me up on it that he will.   And go back to that Scott versus Trump number a few graphs ago – the biggest single contributor to Scott winning North Florida by a larger percentage than Trump:  Scott running up the score in Duval, while Clinton getting Trump to almost a push.  #DUUUVAL

Orlando

Home to just over 4.2 million residents, or 20% of the state’s population, Orlando – in this case, defined as the Orlando media market, is the fastest growing market in the state. 25% of the total population growth in Florida since 2010 can be found in Orlando, and it arguably the place that has seen the most change over the last 25 years. The third largest market in Florida, would alone be the 27th largest state -- roughly the size of Oregon.   It will make up 21% of the vote in 2018.  If you want a really deep dive, I wrote a piece a few months ago about the market. You can read it here.

Just to provide some perspective, Orlando added over 500,000 new residents since 2010, and nearly 45% of them who are Hispanic, largely due to the migration of Puerto Rican families to Central Florida, as well as the growth of existing families. Hispanics have grown from 20% of the population to 25% of the population – in just seven years. Almost all of this is happening in two counties: Orange and Osceola, or more simply, metro Orlando, which sets up some interesting politics in the region.

There is a lot going on here. Drive south from Jacksonville, and you enter the market in Flagler County, a county which boomed in the 90s with a ton of retirement migration from the New York area, then just bottomed out, and in doing so, has gone from an emerging Democratic county to a reliably Republican one. Volusia to the south, home of NASCAR, and Brevard south of that, home to the Space Coast, both longtime manufacturing economies, have been hit hard over the last decade and a half, with Scott winning Volusia both in 2010 and 2014. Not surprisingly, Trump did very well in all three counties.  I believe a Democratic wave will impact counties in Florida – though I don’t expect much of it here.

Move down I-4 from Daytona into metro Orlando, and you see a different story. The economy is humming along, growth has returned, though there is still real income pressure. You also in these counties can see just how much the demographic changes have impacted the politics. Consider this, Crist won the three metro Orlando counties, Orange, Osceola, and Seminole in 2006 by over 50,000 votes, while Sink won the three counties by 25,000 in 2010, and Crist by 32,000 in 2014.

But one of the problems for the statewide math for Democrats, while the numbers in the urban core of Orlando are better for Democrats, the drop off in turnout in the urban Orlando counties, particularly in Orange and Osceola, has played a big role in the Democratic losses in 2010 and 2014.  For example, in both 2008 and 2012, President Obama won these three counties by over 100,000 votes, and Secretary Clinton by 166,000 votes in 2016.  If Gillum just splits the difference in margin between Clinton and Crist (+67K votes), these three counties alone more than make up the Scott win margin in 2014 (64%).

Now one of the interesting things at play here:  Puerto Ricans lean Democratic but are not solidly Democratic.  And Maria migrants, while not insignificant, aren’t the panacea that some national observers suggested a year ago.  This is both a persuasion, and a turnout question.  Honestly reversing the trends of Puerto Rican voters dropping off in midterms is a much bigger imperative than the Maria migrants (though both are important)

The other issue for Democrats, further north of Orlando is the Villages, a fast growing heavily Republican retirement community, largely of retired Midwesterners, and Ocala, which is home to Florida’s horse country. And what is interesting, when you combine the “Villages metro area” with the old manufacturing counties on the east coast, you find the Republican trends there almost balancing out the Democratic trends in the metro Orlando area. Scott in 2014 won the area by roughly 62K votes, increasing from his 44K vote margin 2010 – more than offsetting the Democratic gains in the urban areas.  And like Gillum, DeSantis does have room to grow in the market, largely due to these counties.

Despite all the trends that should benefit the Democrats, Scott increased his margin of victory in the market from 4.7% to 5.3%, and his margin in the market, 65,000 votes, mirrored his statewide win margin.  But there is all kinds of room for growth in the market for Democrats – even with Trump running up record margins in the exurban counties, Trump won the market by a comparably smaller margin of 2.9%.   

To win, DeSantis and Scott will want to see the market numbers model what Scott saw in 2014.  Given the likely growth in Democratic margins in SE Florida, anything closer to the Trump/Clinton margins is good news, though for Nelson and Gillum, if Puerto Rican turnout picks up, there is a real opportunity to this market closer to a push – and if they see those results, they are both could have a very good night.   

Tampa and SW Florida

The biggest “state” in Florida, almost 30%, or 6.25 million residents live in Tampa and SW Florida. The Tampa media market alone is the size of Louisiana, but when combined with the SW Florida counties, you are looking at a region the population of Missouri, equal to 10 electoral votes.

In fairness, Tampa alone could be a standalone region, but I add SW Florida here because it is more culturally aligned with the Tampa area than it is with its neighbors across the River of Grass. 

North to South, this region is well over 200 miles, yet drive down coastal US 19 and 41 from Citrus County in the north to Naples at the far south, and with very few exceptions, it is one now one urban area.  Interstate 75 runs through here, carrying with it a distinctly Midwestern feel to the people who have moved to the region.   In fact, 25-30 years ago, before the area really earned its own identity, if you went to a Tampa Bay football game against then division rivals Green Bay or Chicago, these games were basically home games for the away team. It is not quite as bad today, but you will still see large contingents in their hometown garb.

This midwestern feel is also key for another factor:  the wave.  Wave years tend to crash harder in the Midwest, home to a lot more “swing voters” and if you think of regions of Florida as a mirror of the places where residents moved from, if the Democratic wave really impacts the midwestern US, it will also be felt in this region.

The region is as “white” as North Florida and has the smallest African American population in the state (8.8% of registered voters, compared to 13.3% statewide). There is a fast-growing Hispanic population, which is starting to impact politics, particularly in Hillsborough County (Tampa), but outside of the traditional Cuban population in urban Tampa, the Hispanic population here is much more “Latin” (particularly Mexican) than the eastern and central part of the state, which meant a larger delta between Hispanic residency and voting. However, that is changing. Since 2008, of 42% of the voter registration growth has been Hispanic, though Hispanics still only make up 10.2% of the registration (compared to 16.4% statewide). Overall, among registered voters, the electorate is 75% non-Hispanic white, compared to 64% statewide.

As you move south from Tampa towards Sarasota and beyond, it gets more Republican and you see more wealth. Sarasota is a funky political place, quite Republican in registration, but culturally more progressive. It is a county that of late tends to bounce around according to national trends.  Despite Trump winning it by a healthy margin, earlier this year, Democrats retook a State House seat in a special election, a seat they last won in 2008, and in 2018, Democrats are making a serious play for the Congressional seat held by Vern Buchanan.

But in all these counties, life out by the interstate is quite different than life close to the Gulf. Take Lee County, home to Fort Myers, and during the financial crisis, home to the largest foreclosure crisis in the country – with many communities still underwater. Travel further south into Collier County, and out east of the interstate, you will encounter massive Hispanic populations, including the neat community of Immokalee, a place that feels like almost no place else in the state.  The communities west of the interstate in Charlotte, Lee, and Collier (Naples) Counties make up the one of the key foundational cores of the Republican base.

Scott won these markets by a little over 5%, which was down from 2010, where he carried it 7.5%.  The narrower margin was driven by Crist’s drawing on his traditional strength in the core counties around his home in Pinellas.   Scott has always proven very strong in the Fort Myers market side of the region, winning these counties by nearly 100,000 votes.  Just to drive a finer point on Scott’s strength here:  while the Fort Myers market in 2014 accounted for 6.8% of all the statewide votes, the market accounted for nearly 8.5% of all his votes.  The only market where his disparity was higher was Jacksonville (8.7% of all votes, 11.0% of Scott votes).

Hillsborough (Tampa) used to be the bellwether, though in recent years, demographics have moved the county reliably into the Democratic county.  It is likely the new state barometer will be Pinellas, a county that went for Obama twice, and both Sink & Crist, only to go Trump in 2016.   Another county to keep an eye on is Pasco, a GOP county just to the north of Tampa that was very competitive for President Obama, as well as Sink and Crist, only to go overwhelmingly Trump in 2016.  For Gillum and Nelson, returning these two counties closer to their performance between 2008-2014 will significantly help their win prospects.    Two other places for Democrats:  Imperial Polk County, located just inland from Tampa, and home to a large African American population, and Sarasota, roughly 45 minutes to the south of Tampa, home to a very high percentage of college educated voters, which as mentioned before, tend to break from their GOP roots in years when Democrats do well.  These are places where Gillum and Nelson can make up ground.

For DeSantis, if you compare the region to Trump, there is a lot of room to grow.  Crist’s totals in the counties around HIllsorough were significantly better than Clinton earned 2 years later.  If you take the circle around Tampa – Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Sarasota:  Crist actually won these counties by a fraction of a point – in a GOP wave year, whereas Clinton four years later lost these counties by nearly 6 points. For DeSantis, this should be a place to play offense – yet as mentioned earlier – this is also where the effects of a Democratic wave could be most strongly felt.

So for DeSantis the math is simple:  maintain the Scott margins in Fort Myers and try to replicate the Trump margins in the counties surrounding Hillsborough.  The trouble for him – in this environment, that will be much harder than it sounds.  But if he does, oh boy, it will be close.

Keep an eye on this on election night. Pasco County, a large bedroom community north of Tampa, typically first in the state to report its early and absentee returns right at 7:00PM EST on the Supervisor’s website. If Gillum and Nelson are ahead, or only behind by a few thousand votes, it will probably be a decent night for the Dems.  And overall, if Gillum can get in the vicinity of the Crist numbers around Tampa, given what could happen elsewhere, he’d be in pretty good shape.

Palm Beach

State four – moving back east across the is the Palm Beach media market.  In previous years, I used to group Broward County in with Palm Beach, because it demographically tended to be closer aligned to its county to the north than its county to the south.  This is no longer the case.  Palm Beach is very much its own animal now, and while it is reliably Democratic, at times, has proven to be a little tricky for Democrats.

In terms of Palm Beach, the county is home to just about 2.1 million residents, and in terms of the rest of the state, is incredibly stable.  At the 2010 census, it was 10.2% of the state’s population.  Today, it makes up 10.2% of the state’s population.  And I project the market will make up roughly – wait for it – 10.2% of the statewide vote.

Diversity is changing this market rather rapidly.  Since the 2010 census, the non-Hispanic white population has dropped from 63.4% to 58.6% -- in just eight years.  Correspondingly, since 2008, the non-Hispanic white share of registered voters has dropped from 77.6% to 70.1%.  Palm Beach is no longer just the Del Boca Vista Phase II of years past.  For Democrats, if we get turnout right, this is a very good thing – as some of the smaller margins in recent cycles can be tied to lower white support.

The market, for all purposes, at least of I-95 is pretty dense. While there are some less dense areas in Martin County and Indian River, if you drive down US #1 from Melbourne to the Broward County line (and onward to South Dade), you probably aren’t going to go more than a mile or two without passing a gas station, and if you drive all the way to the Keys, it might take you three days with all the traffic lights.

That being said, west of I-95, things get pretty rural very quickly, and the region still has large areas dedicated to agriculture.  If someone dropped you from a plane into one of the communities around Lake Okeechobee, you’d never think that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago was in the same county.

Palm Beach County is a Democratic county, but the other market counties to the north tend to be more Republican.  In 2010, while Sink won Palm Beach County by nearly 70,000 votes, Rick Scott held Alex Sink’s total margin of victory in the market to 55,000 votes, and thanks to a stronger performance in both St. Lucie County and Palm Beach, Crist extended it to just over 73,000 votes.  However, nothing is certain here.  St. Lucie County, located two counties north of Palm Beach County, had been getting more Democratic over the last decade, only to see the county go to Trump in 2016.   

For Gillum, there are real opportunities here to increase African American and Caribbean turnout.  While the Black share (African American and Caribbean American) share of registered voters has remained stable over the last decade, at around 13%, the Black share in this market has grown from 11% to 13%.    And for Nelson, the region has been an area of strength for him, even as the market has bounced around a bit for other Democrats.  Crist won 53% of the vote in the market, though I would feel better if that number was up closer to 55%. 

For DeSantis and Scott, two main goals here:  maintain Trump’s margins in places like St. Lucie, and try to drive down Democratic white support in Palm Beach, and essentially turn the market into a muddle (keeping that Democratic share under 53%) where the Democratic nominees can’t run up the score.

Miami

Finally, the Miami media market.

The second largest market in Florida, just fractionally smaller than Tampa, the Miami market is home to nearly 4.8 million residents, or about 23% of the state’s population.  On its own, it would be in the top 25 most populated states, roughly akin to Alabama – though population is the only thing the two places have in common.   

Yet, despite the population, Miami is the third largest voting market, home to just north of 17% of likely 2018 voters.  This delta is a function of two things:  lower voter participation, and higher rates of non-citizens.

From north to south, Broward County is the old anchor of Florida Democratic politics.  Sink won the county by 131K votes, while Crist won it four years later by 180K votes by increasing Sink’s 31% win to a 38% win.    The county, like Palm Beach to the north, is rapidly changing.  Those Democratic margins, for years driven by African Americans and retired northeastern liberal whites, are now driven by an increasingly diverse population of Hispanic and Caribbean voters.   Among registered voters, the county has dropped from 57% non-Hispanic white to 45%, in just 10 years, and based on census trends, this will continue well into the foreseeable future.

Miami is one of the most diverse areas in the world. It is becoming what London is to Europe, and what Singapore and Hong Kong are to Asia, that critical hub that serves as both an economic and political point of entry for Latin America, and about the only thing it shares with the rest of the state is the common border.

It is also exceptionally complicated. According to the 2010 census: nearly 85% of this “state” population is made up of people of color, a number that has risen to nearly 87%.  Also, the racial make-up of voters has evolved to more closely mirror the county. 

As recently as the mid-2000’s, the county was as much as 31% non-Hispanic white among registered voters, a number that is just under 18% today. Hispanic residents, who make up 65% of all residents, now make up nearly 58% of all registered voters – and keep in mind, because Hispanic is a self-identified marker on voter registration, actual Hispanic participation is typically higher than registration numbers.  Furthermore, within these subgroups exist tremendous diversity.  There is nothing monolithic about either the Hispanic, or the Black population.  

While it used to not be this way, today Dade County is solidly Democratic in statewide races– and trending even more Democratic. 

Keep this in mind:

Jeb Bush won Dade County, twice.

Jim Davis won by 8 points.

Alex Sink won by 14 points, or about 70,000 votes

Charlie Crist won by almost 20%, or about 100,000 votes.

And…Hillary Clinton won it by just a fraction under 30%. 

If Andrew Gillum were to win Clinton margins in Dade County, he’d win the county by 168,000 votes.   But that is probably wishful thinking, to be honest. 

For Democrats, the goal is simple:  drive those trends to new record margins.  

For Republicans, the plan is more nuanced:  there are segments of the Hispanic population, as well as the Caribbean population where Republicans can scrape at the edges of the Democratic coalition.  In addition, while the younger Cuban populations are more persuadable, they aren’t Democratic, meaning there are votes to be won there.  

As for Monroe, it is a swing county – one of the few left in the state.  A winning plan would send an experienced field hack with significant statewide and swing district experience there to spend a lot of time door knocking (just DM me guys).

For Democrats, Crist won the market by 28 points (63-35), or just over 281k votes.  At likely Democratic turnout, with trends there, stretching that margin to 65-33, or 32 points is quite reasonable, would lead to a potential Democratic margin that would take some crazy scenarios to elect either DeSantis or Scott to get to a win.  But on the flipside, if DeSantis and/or Scott can succeed at peeling back some of those Democratic 2012/2014/2016 votes, thus cutting the margin -- all of the sudden, the rest of the Florida math starts getting pretty tight. 

So how does this plane land?

This piece is long, but Florida isn’t simple. I wanted to show how and why the main candidates are likely to approach the state to win.

But for all the different scenarios, the basic premise of Florida doesn’t really change.  The state and its regions are very stable – winning and losing happens in the margins, and candidates will work to influence where the scale tips in how they manage those margins – Dems keeping it closer in Duval versus Republic3ans over-performing in a place like Palm Beach, or just running up the score somewhere else.   And while I am currently bullish about my party’s chances (though I believe it will be close), both from the standpoint of mood, and Dem opportunities for growth, if DeSantis and Scott are able to replicate Trump like share of the vote in the large suburban and exurban counties around I-4, and cut into the Dade margins, their path looks a lot more real and clear. 

Though nothing is easy here. The state is absurdly expensive, and winning Florida means navigating different cultures, languages, and economic realities. It requires both turning out your base and persuading an ideologically and culturally diverse swing voters. When folks ask me, what is the key to winning Florida, the answer is everything, which can be a hard concept to understand.  There is no key to be found – just a puzzle with 2,000 pieces thrown all over the floor.  Find the pieces, and you win.

So here we go.  2.55 million ballots are landing in mailboxes as I write this (and for the first time in recent history, Democrats have a slight edge in the initial requests), and odds are likely that within 10 days, more than 10% of the likely turnout will have already voted – and by the time we all go to work on Monday, October 15^th, that number will almost surely be north of a million votes, and by the time the polls open on November 6^th, somewhere around 60% of the electorate will have already voted.

The election is on us, and every day that goes by, we will get some clues for how each side is doing on the metrics important to their win.  So, thanks for reading, and stay tuned.    

Oh and Myles Jack wasn't down.  #NeverForget

Florida - Persuasion or Turnout...or both?

In the never-ending quest to simplify Florida, one of the ongoing debates about winning the state is whether Florida is a state won by winning persuadable voters, or whether it is all about turning out one’s base. 

I remember when I started with Obama, I got a ton of advice – most of it unsolicited (much was helpful), though a significant portion went something like this:  “Steve, nothing matters but I-4…Steve, if you don’t maximize the Jewish vote, you can’t win…Steve, field is dumb, it is an air war state…Steve, TV is dumb, it is a field war state…Steve, you have to do better with absentees...Steve, don't waste money trying to convince Democrats to vote by mail...Steve, you have to watch your floor in North Florida, or you can’t win…Steve, you have to take Obama to Condo X, or you won't win...Steve, you have to pay for bus benches in Miami, or you can’t win.”  You get the point.

Here is the secret – all of it matters.  Florida is neither a persuasion state, or a turnout state.  It is, in my honest opinion, both.  It doesn’t matter if it is a Presidential cycle, or a midterm year, Florida is a state about managing margins, everywhere.

Avid readers of my blog (thank you to all three of you) have read me refer to Florida as a self-correcting scale.   The bases of both parties do a nice job of balancing – or cancelling themselves out, almost regardless of population or demographic shifts.   

Before we go any further – it is important to note that this phenomenon is almost exclusively a result of my party losing vote share among non-Hispanic whites.  If we were winning non-Hispanic whites at a level anywhere near Obama 2008, based on the demographic shifts in Florida, we would be a leaning to likely Democratic state.  At the same time – if Florida wasn’t experiencing demographic changes – and the Republicans weren’t losing share among voters of color – particularly Hispanics, we would be a predictably Republican state.   Functionally, if either party can broaden their own coalition, Florida quickly gets less competitive.

But these two factors have largely cancelled each other out – hence the self-correcting scale.

Let’s review quickly how Democrats and Republicans win Florida. 

Because I am a Democrat, let’s start there.  Democrats earn their votes in a handful of counties, specifically: Leon, Gadsden, Alachua, Hillsborough, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade.   Winning Democratic candidates typically do a few other things: win Pinellas, win St. Lucie, win a few North Florida counties like Jefferson, maintain reasonable margins counties like in Duval, Sarasota, Volusia, and Seminole.    They also maintain a reasonable floor in North Florida, suburban/exurban counties around I-4, and the Fort Myers media market.

For Republicans, their math is a little different – they win a lot more counties, but by relatively smaller margins.  Their win comes from winning in places like Pinellas and St. Lucie, and running up the score in places the Panhandle, the First Coast, the suburban and exurban counties around I-4, and in southwest Florida. 

I’ve written extensively about this dynamic in Presidential cycles.  You can read my primer on Florida here, or my 2016 debrief here and here, but in short, I would argue there was a lot of misreading of the Obama wins in Florida.  Yes, they were driven by significantly increasing the margins in the Democratic base counties over Kerry, and growing them in 2012.  But here’s the thing – that alone wouldn’t have won the state.  In both 08 and 12, Obama generally kept the margins in check in the GOP counties – and he won the few battleground counties that exist in Florida. 

Take Obama 12 and Clinton 16 – both races decided by a roughly one percent margin.   For all the chatter about a “less than enthusiastic” Democratic base, Clinton won the base Democratic counties by more than Obama did.  Her problem wasn’t turnout.  Her problem was Trump winning the few battleground counties, and setting new records in both share of the vote and actual vote margins in those places where they must run up the score to win, and where we need to keep it in check.  

I can read your mind – “That’s interesting Steve, but this is a midterm cycle, and you know it is different.”

Yes, it is – and no it isn’t.

Yes, it s different because the electorate is smaller, and at least in the last two cycles, been more Republican (a fact impacted by two consecutive midterm waves for the GOP), which was a change from 06, where turnout marginally leaned Democratic (and Dems won 2 statewide races). 

But there are a lot of similarities between the Presidential and midterm cycles.   Both Republicans and Democrats still need to carry their margins in the same counties as they do in Presidential cycles.  While the vote totals are different in individual regions and counties are different, the functional roadmaps for winning isn't.

Rick Scott won two elections by a point, however, the shape of those wins was quite different, and in those differences lies the path to how the Democrats can win in 2018.

In 2010, the Democratic struggles were a creature of three real problems:  Hispanic drop-off from 2008, lower participation among white Democrats particularly in Central Florida, and wave of GOP and GOP-leaning NPA voters who saw voting for the GOP as a way to send a message to President Obama.  From a math standpoint, this led to lower than necessary margins in South and Central Florida base counties.   But here is the thing, Scott ran up some very large margins in parts of the state, Sink kept him in check in many others.  In fact, she kept him in check by more than enough in many GOP counties to have a winning coalition if the Democratic counties had performed well.   But they didn't.   The lesson of Sink:  Florida isn’t alone a persuasion state.

Crist’s math in 2014 was quite different.  Crist ran on a far more progressive platform than Sink, with a fairly robust turnout operation – certainly not the size of Obama, but the largest in midterm cycle history for Florida Democrats, and as a result succeeded to run up the score in the base Democratic counties, winning the three South Florida counties by almost 100,000 more votes than Sink.   He also did well enough in the “Crist counties” – the stretch from Pasco through Sarasota, where his brand is most established, winning those counties by a total of almost 2.5%, where Sink lost them by a half of a point.   

But the floor fell out for him in North Florida.  Despite North Florida shrinking as a percentage of the electorate from 2010 (20%) to 2014 (19%), Crist lost the region by 8% more than Sink did, netting Scott’s margin roughly 107,000 more votes, more than wiping out the gains Crist made in the base Democratic counties (97,000 votes).

One other way of looking at it, Crist won the base Democratic counties by 92,000 more votes than Sink did.  He lost everything else by 95,000 more votes than Sink.   The lesson of Crist, as was also the lesson of Clinton:  Florida isn’t alone a turnout state.

If Clinton has her margins in the base counties, plus Obama’s elsewhere, she wins by a point or two.

If Sink had her math, plus Crist’s margins in the base counties, he wins by about a point. If Crist has his margins, plus Sink’s margins only in North Florida, he wins by almost a point. 

2018 will be different yet.  The Democratic nominee will benefit from an electorate that is more diverse, meaning the base county margins should rise, and I think there is a lot of room for growth in the Orlando urban core.  However, at the same time, they will be unlikely be able to count on some the margins Crist won in his corner of the state, and will have to contend with areas where the GOP population is growing.  The questions aren't as simple as how do we turnout more voters, but also have to include questions like how do we keep Duval looking more like it did for Obama, Clinton, and Sink than it did for Scott in 14 or Rubio?    

For Republicans, they must deal with the fact demographics are changing in a way that helps the Democrats, and that 2018, unlike 2010 and 2014, will almost surely not be a very good Republican year, as we've seen in each of the competitive special and off-cycle elections this year.

I believe that in Scott/Nelson, as well as in the Governor's race, Florida starts this year somewhere around 47-47 -- maybe even 48-48, and we will be fighting over the path to that remaining 150,000 votes or so that a winning candidate will need.   Some of those votes are found by increasing turnout, others won and lost in the persuasion fight.  The candidate who wins in 2018 won't find those votes by getting just one of those things right, they will succeed in building the right answer to a puzzle.  That is just how Florida works these days.

Resiliency in the Philippines

As anyone who has participated in these kind of exchanges know, there is a typical flow to the days:  breakfast, followed by a formal courtesy call or two with a Mayor/Governor/Legislative Leader, some kind of early afternoon lunch with a mix of elected and civil society types, maybe another political meeting in the afternoon, followed by a cultural activity, then dinner with community leaders/friends of the host. 

I’ve done three overseas trips and hosted three groups, and the basic rule is pack as much in as you can.  For me, Friday was supposed to be a day like that:  Breakfast in the morning, a meeting with Joy Belmonte, the Vice Mayor of Quezon City (the largest city in Manila), lunch with a few local Mayors, afternoon meeting with a few more, and a dinner with several people I first met when I came to the Philippines in 2013.    Of all the days of the trip, this was one I really looked forward to, as it would be a chance to reconnect with some old acquaintances, including Vice Mayor Belmonte.  It was the “old home week” day of the trip.

Then the fire happened. 

A day or two earlier, a small electrical fire started in an urban home in the city, but since that home was in a tightly cramped informal settlement, by the time it was contained, it had wiped out 400 homes in the neighborhood, displacing between 1500-2000 people.  The fire destroyed everything – people who already had very little survived with nothing more than the clothes on their back.  So rather than meeting with me, the Vice Mayor said she would pick us up at the hotel, and we’d all head to the temporary camp housing the victims to help distribute relief supplies.

The temporary camp was set up in a local park with an amphitheater.  For Tallahassee residents, the park would remind you of Cascade Park, so imagine the amphitheater there being set up as temporary housing for 1500-2000 people, with the roof only providing moderate relief from the elements.   When we arrived, there was a very rudimentary health care tent, a pile of donated clothes people were wading through to find stuff that fit them, and a couple of hoses for personal cleaning and drinking water.  It’s the kind of place most of us couldn’t imagine calling home for more than a few hours, let alone for days or weeks.

Frankly, at first, I felt really out of place, completely overwhelmed and helpless, and almost exploitive being there.  I didn’t want to be the guy that just showed up because I should.  The local politicians offered to let me hang out bags, but that honestly made me feel worse – so I went in the back and helped move supplies from a truck.   In the midst of trying to be useful, I saw a woman and her kid with several bags of supplies sitting under a tree.  Assuming she might be waiting for help, I asked if I could carry her stuff to where they were sleeping – and ended up striking up a conversation.   Turns out, this woman, now homeless from what was basically a slum, was putting two children through college, literally sacrificing everything to give her kids a better life.   She was a good reminder to never judge a book by its cover.

The more I talked to people, the more I saw that despite the outward impressions of total misery, there was near universal joy among the people, and genuine kindness towards me for simply being there.  Instead of holding back tears or hiding in the back, I found myself fist-bumping with kids, and hugging grandmothers.  I left there bouyed by their optimism and spirit.

Before coming, I talked to several experts, and the words they kept using to define the Filipino people: happiness and resilience.   This is a place that has been the center of many wars, including one we fought to colonize the country, and another to free it from the Japanese.  Typhoons batter the islands many times each season.  Governance here is messy – from the Marcos years, to Duterte today, to the corruption that you hear about from nearly every one in civil society.  This is a place of survivors. 

After leaving the camp, I sat down with several mayors who are successfully taking on poverty, including Kauswagan Mayor Rommel Arnado, himself a Filipino-American who decided to renounce his American citizenship to go home and run for Mayor in his ancestral home.  Mayor Arnado developed a program called “arms to farms” to encourage separatist rebels on the island of Mindanao to give up the fight.  Basically, if you would volunteer to give up your arms, the city would help you get into organic farming.  The program is now being replicated in cities in other war-torn areas.    In another, Siayan Mayor Flora Villarosa has reduced the poverty rate from 97.5% to 60%. I asked her how, and after reeling off some deliverables, she said fundamentally it was about teaching people how to dream bigger than their next meal. 

The issues here are immense.  First, the geography of the country is almost unmanageable, and the infrastructure is woefully underprepared for a growing country of 100 million people.  Getting around here is slow, and so much productivity, and honestly, just hours of life here are lost sitting in traffic.  I’ve been in seven hotels in the last eight nights, and after hours every day in the car, I am beat – I can’t imagine doing this day in, day out.   And the poverty – it is every where you look.   But it is hard to not feel hopeful after spending a week with young leaders. 

I am writing this while traveling from my last speaking event, making the 60 mile, but nearly 3-hour journey to the airport, to fly to Manila, for my trip home.  When you drive this slowly, you can see life in slow motion.  Just as we left, we drove through a pretty significant storm, a rain that was broken by a rainbow that developed over a nearby volcano.  As the rain subsided, people came back to the streets, kids started playing basketball, road side markets got busy again, and life returned to normal.  The history of this country has been one storm after another, followed by a resilient people recovering.

This is a place that is important to America for a lot of reasons.  The strategic location of the country is an obvious reason, but so is the relationship of Filipinos to America – this place is western, and nearly everyone you meet here has family in the US.   There are a lot of reasons to be engaged here, with one of the strongest being the countless young Filipino leaders committed to getting it right – and that is the whole point of the Young Southeast Leaders Initiative, to create relationships between rising young leaders in the ASEAN region and young Americans who share common goals.  I’d argue this program, and the similar ones that operate in other regions, are some of the most important tools in our forward-facing diplomatic toolbox.

I am truly grateful for ACYPL, the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, and the State Department for the opportunity to come back.  I am indebted to my brother for life, L.A. Ruanto, who took a more than a week from his family to take me around the country.  The place has been kinder to me than I deserve.   Someone once said of travel that when you travel, you never feel completely home again, because you leave a piece of your heart behind.   That is certainly the case for me and the Philippines.  Nonetheless, I leave this place renewed by the inspiring leaders I’ve met, and hopeful that life won’t make me wait another 4.5 years before returning.