Since Florida turning red was being discussed, I feel that the reason why it happened in the first place has simply been gotten wrong by the MSM.
A lot of ink has been spilled over it and the mainstream explanations such as Cuban conservatism (which was always present and rivaled by growth of other liberal voting groups) or other demograp…
Since Florida turning red was being discussed, I feel that the reason why it happened in the first place has simply been gotten wrong by the MSM.
A lot of ink has been spilled over it and the mainstream explanations such as Cuban conservatism (which was always present and rivaled by growth of other liberal voting groups) or other demographic shifts, have always felt somewhat shallow, and even the popular "voter migration" narrative (retirees move there but Florida's median age is still lower than most).
The possibly disproportionate conservative migration was during the entire course of pandemic while the election was in November 2020 and is still built on very limited data (only the voting registration of a small numbers of movers - 300k in the NYT Upshot analysis - are known and and their previous home state registration might not even reflect their votes since decades). Rather than focusing on local narratives, I've based it on broad national trends.
During the oft cited 2000 election, the Democrats' erstwhile Solid South hadn't completely vanished even after 1994 (some areas where the party is completely toxic today still voted for them, college educated voters preferred the GOP and New Deal-era voters were still alive). Democrats were also centre-right compared to the centre-left Democrats of today though that's a different story.
We all know Obama won Florida twice - in 2008 and 2012 - thanks to his unique strength among working-class and rural white voters, as well as some residual loyalty in New Deal-era socially conservative rural counties. These strongholds began to collapse in 2016, shifting states like Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana into the Republican column more permanently. Yet Florida was actually closer in 2016 than in 2020: Hillary Clinton only lost by a single percentage point, while Biden - despite increasing investment in the state and improving on Clinton's performance in places like Texas, Iowa, and Ohio – lost by 3.4 points.
Interestingly, Biden improved across almost all demographics nationally but performed worse among Latinos and rural whites. In fact, no Democrat has ever matched Hillary's 2016 performance with Latino voters. Her relative strength is likely attributable to Trump's not yet normalized anti-Latino inflammatory rhetoric at the time and Hillary's solid promise of immigration reform. Hillary even won an estimated 46% of the Cuban vote — a rare high-water mark for Democrats with a group that barely voted for Gore or Kerry. Hillary also won Latino populated Nevada while losing the remaining swing states.
So here's the core of my theory: Florida was only competitive in 2016 because of a once-in-a-generation showing among Latino voters, including Cubans. That anomaly masked the broader realignment already underway and clearly seen in Ohio or Iowa. Without Obama-era levels of support from rural and working-class whites, Democrats simply could not win the state. If you dig into the precinct-level data, the trend becomes clear: small cities, towns, exurbs, and rural counties have trended increasingly red, while urban centers and suburbs have gone bluer - but not by enough to overcome the former (in 2020). Florida's demographics are also not typically Southern except in North Florida.
This structural Republican dominance isn’t new either. Consider 2010: Democrat Alex Sink lost to Rick Scott , a literal Medicaid fraudster and human ghoul, by just 1 percentage point, yet Republicans won the statewide House vote in Florida by an astonishing 18 points during the Tea Party wave. In 2014, Scott narrowly beat Charlie Crist by just 1 point again, but Republicans carried the House vote by about 12 points. In both cycles, you can see the same story: even when Democrats come close in top-of-ticket races against unpopular nominees, the GOP holds firm control down-ballot.
Now look at 2018, a "blue wave" year nationally. Democrats narrowly lost the governorship when Ron DeSantis beat Andrew Gillum by just 0.4 points. Yet even that close gubernatorial result masked a deeper trend: Florida Republicans still won the U.S. House vote by 6 percentage points statewide. This was a midterm where Democrats were flipping seats across the country - yet Florida stood out as an outlier. Democrats ran a charismatic candidate (atleast at that point) with strong urban turnout and improved among all demographics except Latinos, but it wasn’t enough to counter the entrenched Republican strength in less urban areas, with non college educated white voters. DeSantis was not yet popular and was an average candidate who had seemingly lost the primary until Trump's sudden endorsement.
Maybe, Florida Democrats can get their shit together in 2026-28, the results may be close as 2020 (or 2018 due to midterm electorate differences) with another Latino swing resembling the Biden-Trump spread or maybe a lot of conservatives actually moved there and it will be never reach those margins again. Maybe, they might eke out a victory with a moderate common sense candidate... Also, a lot of COVID era movers have been going back to New England and California since the end of remote work and due to Florida's affordability crisis contributing to the current housing price crash in Florida.
I hope this makes some sense and look forward to hearing what you guys think about this theory.
Edit: Florida is a quarter Latino (in total population not voting population) and is not a majority-minority state like many assume.
In 2016, it was the WWC shift in the exurbs. FL outside of several city centers, is just a giant exurb.
Rural FL is tiny even it showed an overwhelming areas of red shift, since the state was the smallest one in the Old South. If you look at the numbers, all the bright red rural shift caused HRC losing by about 30k more than 2012, less than half of Obama’s winning margin. Had Everything else been equal, wouldn’t flip the state.
2020, Biden got better number in the cities not in SE, matched or improved marginally in the exurbs, fell further behind in the rurals, and crashed in Dade. The later two were where the further deficit of 250k votes came about.
2024 just crashed everywhere. The electorate there is changing very fast, that you can track from the registration updates from FLSOS. Newly added, party changes, cancellations, etc.
Yeah I don't get the "either or" debate here; to me it's clear Florida has gotten redder for a multitude of reasons; WWC Demosaur areas reddening, RW in-migration, reddening Hispanic cohort etc.
I do think Obama's close wins there masked how generally red Florida has been for the past 40+ years. Clinton didn't even win it in 1992.
I also see a problem in the Palm Beach/Broward county area. We used to get a lot of retirees from the Northeast who tended to vote heavily Democratic while the current group of retirees are not as heavily from the Northeast and are much more conservative. I am also curious at how the ongoing insurance issues with insurance prices rising by huge amounts due to rising flood risks from climate change. I suspect that more educated and more liberal voters will be very wary to move to an area with such a problem while less educated voters and climate change deniers (think low education/high income retirees) will not be deterred by such a problem.
Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of non-MAGA people I know are now avoiding Florida, when it was a popular vacation/retirement destination for people of all political stripes as recently as just before the pandemic.
I also think there's a growing awareness that Florida (especially South Florida) weather is...not for everyone.
Florida getting more Conservative Silent Generation retirees from the Midwest compared to the more liberal Greatest Generation Northeast retirees who preceded them didn't start during Covid.
I see. But then you also had the reverse great migration, young job seekers from other states and foreign immigrants coming in countering those trends right?
The immigration has been a lot of Latinos coming from authoritarian "leftist" regimes (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) who lean conservative. I also don't think Miami or Tampa attracted the sort of young educated liberal demos like Atlanta, Research Triangle, or NOVA did, but that's based more on vibes-I don't know the actual data there.
Venezuelans and Nicaraguans backed Democrats until 2020. You could be right about the young educated demos thing. Even I feel that Florida attracted more midwestern WCWs than them.
Thanks for posting such an interesting analysis! One question: when you say that "urban centers and suburbs have gone bluer", how true is that in Florida? Hasn't the largest urban center - Miami - deteriorated a lot?
Hillary Clinton did so well with the Cuban vote that a lot of folks (myself included) thought that they were realigning toward Democrats. Heck, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was scared into retirement, and Donna Shalalalalalalalala (who in hindsight was a terrible candidate) defeated a well-known, Spanish-speaking opponent to succeed her!
Just goes to show how quickly fortunes can change.
Since Florida turning red was being discussed, I feel that the reason why it happened in the first place has simply been gotten wrong by the MSM.
A lot of ink has been spilled over it and the mainstream explanations such as Cuban conservatism (which was always present and rivaled by growth of other liberal voting groups) or other demographic shifts, have always felt somewhat shallow, and even the popular "voter migration" narrative (retirees move there but Florida's median age is still lower than most).
The possibly disproportionate conservative migration was during the entire course of pandemic while the election was in November 2020 and is still built on very limited data (only the voting registration of a small numbers of movers - 300k in the NYT Upshot analysis - are known and and their previous home state registration might not even reflect their votes since decades). Rather than focusing on local narratives, I've based it on broad national trends.
During the oft cited 2000 election, the Democrats' erstwhile Solid South hadn't completely vanished even after 1994 (some areas where the party is completely toxic today still voted for them, college educated voters preferred the GOP and New Deal-era voters were still alive). Democrats were also centre-right compared to the centre-left Democrats of today though that's a different story.
We all know Obama won Florida twice - in 2008 and 2012 - thanks to his unique strength among working-class and rural white voters, as well as some residual loyalty in New Deal-era socially conservative rural counties. These strongholds began to collapse in 2016, shifting states like Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana into the Republican column more permanently. Yet Florida was actually closer in 2016 than in 2020: Hillary Clinton only lost by a single percentage point, while Biden - despite increasing investment in the state and improving on Clinton's performance in places like Texas, Iowa, and Ohio – lost by 3.4 points.
Interestingly, Biden improved across almost all demographics nationally but performed worse among Latinos and rural whites. In fact, no Democrat has ever matched Hillary's 2016 performance with Latino voters. Her relative strength is likely attributable to Trump's not yet normalized anti-Latino inflammatory rhetoric at the time and Hillary's solid promise of immigration reform. Hillary even won an estimated 46% of the Cuban vote — a rare high-water mark for Democrats with a group that barely voted for Gore or Kerry. Hillary also won Latino populated Nevada while losing the remaining swing states.
So here's the core of my theory: Florida was only competitive in 2016 because of a once-in-a-generation showing among Latino voters, including Cubans. That anomaly masked the broader realignment already underway and clearly seen in Ohio or Iowa. Without Obama-era levels of support from rural and working-class whites, Democrats simply could not win the state. If you dig into the precinct-level data, the trend becomes clear: small cities, towns, exurbs, and rural counties have trended increasingly red, while urban centers and suburbs have gone bluer - but not by enough to overcome the former (in 2020). Florida's demographics are also not typically Southern except in North Florida.
https://www.google.com/search?q=2016+presidential+election+county+shift+map&udm=2
https://www.google.com/search?q=2020+presidential+election+county+shift+map&udm=2
This structural Republican dominance isn’t new either. Consider 2010: Democrat Alex Sink lost to Rick Scott , a literal Medicaid fraudster and human ghoul, by just 1 percentage point, yet Republicans won the statewide House vote in Florida by an astonishing 18 points during the Tea Party wave. In 2014, Scott narrowly beat Charlie Crist by just 1 point again, but Republicans carried the House vote by about 12 points. In both cycles, you can see the same story: even when Democrats come close in top-of-ticket races against unpopular nominees, the GOP holds firm control down-ballot.
Now look at 2018, a "blue wave" year nationally. Democrats narrowly lost the governorship when Ron DeSantis beat Andrew Gillum by just 0.4 points. Yet even that close gubernatorial result masked a deeper trend: Florida Republicans still won the U.S. House vote by 6 percentage points statewide. This was a midterm where Democrats were flipping seats across the country - yet Florida stood out as an outlier. Democrats ran a charismatic candidate (atleast at that point) with strong urban turnout and improved among all demographics except Latinos, but it wasn’t enough to counter the entrenched Republican strength in less urban areas, with non college educated white voters. DeSantis was not yet popular and was an average candidate who had seemingly lost the primary until Trump's sudden endorsement.
Maybe, Florida Democrats can get their shit together in 2026-28, the results may be close as 2020 (or 2018 due to midterm electorate differences) with another Latino swing resembling the Biden-Trump spread or maybe a lot of conservatives actually moved there and it will be never reach those margins again. Maybe, they might eke out a victory with a moderate common sense candidate... Also, a lot of COVID era movers have been going back to New England and California since the end of remote work and due to Florida's affordability crisis contributing to the current housing price crash in Florida.
I hope this makes some sense and look forward to hearing what you guys think about this theory.
Edit: Florida is a quarter Latino (in total population not voting population) and is not a majority-minority state like many assume.
Kudos for a fascinating and credible analysis! Very different from others I’ve seen.
In 2016, it was the WWC shift in the exurbs. FL outside of several city centers, is just a giant exurb.
Rural FL is tiny even it showed an overwhelming areas of red shift, since the state was the smallest one in the Old South. If you look at the numbers, all the bright red rural shift caused HRC losing by about 30k more than 2012, less than half of Obama’s winning margin. Had Everything else been equal, wouldn’t flip the state.
2020, Biden got better number in the cities not in SE, matched or improved marginally in the exurbs, fell further behind in the rurals, and crashed in Dade. The later two were where the further deficit of 250k votes came about.
2024 just crashed everywhere. The electorate there is changing very fast, that you can track from the registration updates from FLSOS. Newly added, party changes, cancellations, etc.
Yeah I don't get the "either or" debate here; to me it's clear Florida has gotten redder for a multitude of reasons; WWC Demosaur areas reddening, RW in-migration, reddening Hispanic cohort etc.
I do think Obama's close wins there masked how generally red Florida has been for the past 40+ years. Clinton didn't even win it in 1992.
I also see a problem in the Palm Beach/Broward county area. We used to get a lot of retirees from the Northeast who tended to vote heavily Democratic while the current group of retirees are not as heavily from the Northeast and are much more conservative. I am also curious at how the ongoing insurance issues with insurance prices rising by huge amounts due to rising flood risks from climate change. I suspect that more educated and more liberal voters will be very wary to move to an area with such a problem while less educated voters and climate change deniers (think low education/high income retirees) will not be deterred by such a problem.
Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of non-MAGA people I know are now avoiding Florida, when it was a popular vacation/retirement destination for people of all political stripes as recently as just before the pandemic.
I also think there's a growing awareness that Florida (especially South Florida) weather is...not for everyone.
RW in migration would not be relevant for 2020.
Florida getting more Conservative Silent Generation retirees from the Midwest compared to the more liberal Greatest Generation Northeast retirees who preceded them didn't start during Covid.
I see. But then you also had the reverse great migration, young job seekers from other states and foreign immigrants coming in countering those trends right?
The immigration has been a lot of Latinos coming from authoritarian "leftist" regimes (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) who lean conservative. I also don't think Miami or Tampa attracted the sort of young educated liberal demos like Atlanta, Research Triangle, or NOVA did, but that's based more on vibes-I don't know the actual data there.
Venezuelans and Nicaraguans backed Democrats until 2020. You could be right about the young educated demos thing. Even I feel that Florida attracted more midwestern WCWs than them.
Puerto Ricans and Haitians also backed till 2020. Haitians may have backed in 2024 too.
Obama’s close wins and the sense that Gore won or should have won it in 2000.
Yes and crashed in Dade due to the same national phenomenon Latino rightward swing in 2020 compared to 2016.
2024 was a complete bloodbath but I was focusing on how it turned red from purple in the first place.
Isbell of MCI maps, is the authoritative source you can read on Florida.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mcimaps/p/issue-234-looking-at-2024-partisan?r=3t7cxe&utm_medium=ios
Thanks for posting such an interesting analysis! One question: when you say that "urban centers and suburbs have gone bluer", how true is that in Florida? Hasn't the largest urban center - Miami - deteriorated a lot?
As I wrote, Biden performed worse among Latinos who are concentrated in South Florida.
Other cities went bluer in 2016 and 2020.
Thanks for the analysis!
Hillary Clinton did so well with the Cuban vote that a lot of folks (myself included) thought that they were realigning toward Democrats. Heck, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was scared into retirement, and Donna Shalalalalalalalala (who in hindsight was a terrible candidate) defeated a well-known, Spanish-speaking opponent to succeed her!
Just goes to show how quickly fortunes can change.