Will Abortion on the Ballot Flip Florida? - Top 3 Takeaways – April 5th, 2024
- Flipping Florida. Ever since Monday’s Supreme Court rulings which allowed Florida’s previously passed restrictions on abortions to go into place, meaning that as of May 1st Florida will have a six-week limit on abortions with exceptions, Democrats from Washington D.C. on down have been talking about flipping Florida. Here are some related headlines... From The Hill: Biden campaign announces it will target flipping Trump’s Florida. From ABC News (which is seemingly working to outmaneuver NBC News for the crown of the hardest left network of the legacy alphabet networks): Florida’s 6-week abortion ban ‘catastrophic for the region,’ activist says. The Economist (because ya know who doesn’t turn to The Economist for abortion and related political news): An abortion ruling has Democrats hoping Florida is in play. Axios: Democrats dream of turning Florida blue with abortion rights boost. Now, in this general conversation a few things are certain. 1) President Biden’s campaign is going to spend money trying to compete in Florida after all and abortion being on the ballot appears to be a big reason why. 2) If President Biden were to win Florida the presidential election would effectively be over. 3) Abortion has proven to be an effective issue for Democrats since Roe v. Wade was overturned 4) According to the CDC only 1.2% of women of childbearing age have an abortion within a given year...so I’m not sure how restrictions, at any level, could be “catastrophic” for a region (now, they are catastrophic for the unborn of the 1.2%). 5) The race to watch in Florida for any number of reasons isn’t likely the presidential race but rather the senate race. 1.1%, 1.1%, 0.1%. What are those? The margins of victory, for Rick Scott in each of his three statewide elections (two gubernatorial elections and one senate election). No politician in Florida’s history has more closely, let alone successfully, walked the political tightrope than Rick Scott. Now, a lot, a lot has changed politically in Florida since then. The biggest example in an electoral context is this...as of Election Day 2018 Florida’s Democrats still held a voter registration advantage of over 257,000 voters. Today, the Republican advantage is over 855,000 voters – a remarkable swing of over 1-million voters. However, if Democrats are to mount a serious statewide challenge on the back of the abortion issue...
- The Senate race would be the race where it would happen. Rick Scott has a history of winning razor thin elections and he’ll likely be running against a woman, in former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell who is already enthusiastically running on the abortion issue, having called abortion being on November’s ballots “a game changer”. To the extent that abortion plays as a political issue in Florida in November it’s not likely to significantly impact the presidential race. That’s for two reasons. 1.2% and 3.4%. 1) Those are Donald Trump’s margins of victory in Florida in 2016 and in 2020. Trump’s smallest margin of victory in Florida is larger than Rick Scott’s largest margin of victory and Trump nearly tripled his margin of victory in the most recent presidential election. That was an election in which he performed worse nationally. The margins and trends have been Trump’s friend and that’s independent of the record Republican surge in voter registrations since then. 2) Florida’s abortion policy isn’t Donald Trump’s abortion policy, and it appears he’s set to make that clear. Last year when Governor DeSantis signed Florida’s 6-week abortion limit with exceptions into law (the law that will take effect May 1st), Trump had this to say: I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. Specifically, Trump thinks Florida’s new law is too restrictive.
- Democrats will have an awfully hard time trying to take down Trump in Florida, who’s support has only grown in the state over time, with a law that he didn’t have a hand in passing and that he doesn’t agree with. Also, it appears that next week he’ll make his abortion position clear. When asked this week by NBC News what his position on Florida’s six-week abortion limit law is (which is poor journalism given what he’s already said that I just shared with you), he said “We will be making a statement next week on abortion”. Now, what will that statement be? That’s a good question and one that may ultimately prove to be decisive in this year’s presidential race. The rumor mill suggests a proposed federal abortion law with a 16-week limit with exceptions may be in the offing. We shall see. There could be risk associated with any effort to federalize the abortion issue for Donald Trump. After all, one of the arguments for the overturning of Roe v. Wade was for the issue to be handled by individual states. Then again it appears as though Democrats are going to run on this issue this year everywhere regardless. Trump recently said regarding this issue: We’re going to come up with a time – and maybe we could bring the country together on that issue. If, with whatever he says next week, he manages to bring the country together on the issue of abortion, he’ll have moved mountains. Whatever he has to say on the issue isn’t likely to flip Florida in the presidential race, but it could prove critical if he’s to flip back states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in route to winning the presidential race.