Florida’s Historic Political Shift, Swing States & Congressional Races - Top 3 Takeaways – June 21st, 2024
- More than a million. I’m a numbers guy and a data wonk. This is no secret. After all there are two sides to stories and one side to facts and in a world filled with conjecture and fake news numbers do not lie. Now given how much time I spend studying numbers and studying data to produce the stories that I produce for you it’s rare that I’m particularly impressed by what I see. In almost every facet of life whatever we’re seeing happen today has happened many times before. We just naturally tend to think that what’s happening today is more important or considerably different because we’re currently living it. Recentcy bias is real...For example, every day in the news you hear about how incredibility hot it is seemingly everywhere. And have records fallen? Absolutely. For example, this May was the hottest May on record in Florida. But was the country on fire? Not exactly. According to NOAA in the 130-year history of official record keeping May was just the 13th warmest on record across the country...meaning that once on average every ten years the country has been as hot as it’s been recently. But there is something that’s never happened in Florida or any other state in official record keeping before. A partisan shift of over one million voters from one election to the next. Actually, check that – it has now happened in Florida. This week as I’ve been disseminating the state’s most recent voter registration information something has come into focus. Just how dramatic the partisan swing in Florida has been in under four years. On Election Day 2020 Florida’s Democrats a had 116,950 voter advantage by way of partisan voters' registrations. By the end of May, Florida’s Republicans held a 930,671-voter advantage – a swing of 1 million 47 thousand plus registered voters. But it’s not just the size of the historic swing that’s so notable, it’s how pervasive it’s been. Are there still blue bastions in Florida? No doubt. But not nearly as many as four years ago and even Florida’s bluest bastion of all – Broward County – isn't nearly as blue as it was before. The Democrat’s voter registration advantage in Broward is over 115,000 voters fewer than it was less than four years ago. In other words, over 10% of all gains Republicans have made within the state have come in Broward. Who would have seen that one coming? And on that note consider this...Republicans have gained ground or extended voter registration leads in each of Florida’s 67 counties. There’s not a single corner of the state that’s not a bit redder today. The only thing hotter than the summer sun in our state has been the Republican Party within it. Speaking of extending leads...
- Swing state polling... There’s been a lot of national polling that’s come in but there’s one thing we haven’t had much of since the New York state conviction of the former and perhaps future President of the United States...swing state polling. Yesterday we got a solid dose from The Hill/Emerson. And what did the swing state survey’s say? That Trump is currently set to sweep them. Donald Trump is shown with a head-to-head lead over President Biden in every swing state except for Minnesota – a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since Nixon (and in Minnesota, The Hill/Emerson poll shows the race as currently tied). Most importantly for Trump the New York state conviction hasn’t had an impact or if it has – it hasn’t been bad. Over the previous Hill/Emerson swing state polling conducted in April Trump is shown with the same lead he had in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And in the other three key swing states he’s grown his lead – Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. As was also noted by the pollster: Independent voters break for Trump in all seven states. That’s huge news for team Trump in the first major swing state temperature check since the news of his criminal conviction in New York. Speaking of polling, Trump and New York. There was another New York poll released yesterday that showed Trump only down single digits – in a state he lost by 21-points eight years ago and 23-points four years ago. If the kind of swing we’re seeing in New York’s polling is even close to true, it’s further evidence that there are almost certainly many more states in play that most people realize. In fact, potentially almost all of them. However, it’s not translating...
- Down ballot. Donald Trump may be shown with a lead in every swing state. He may even prove to be competitive in almost all states. But Trump’s polling success at the top of the ticket isn’t translating the same way with the second most important races on the ticket. There are 34 senate races up for election this year and there’s only one so far where the Republican candidate is polling at least as well as Trump is – Ted Cruz’s reelection bid in Texas. Republicans in Senate races across the country, including in Florida, continue to poll well behind, typically 5 or more points, where Trump’s polling against Biden. Republicans have work to do down ballot or they could find themselves significantly underperforming expectations with congressional races yet again.