So Goes Florida...

Topic: Elections

You’ve heard it a hundred times – so goes (insert state) , so goes the nation.  Sometimes it is applied to Texas, and maybe there is some cultural weight to that statement; however, when it comes down to presidential politics, it was, always has been, and still is Florida that fits that statement best.

Florida, along with Ohio, are (or were) two of the most prominent bellwethers (leading indicator of a final election outcome) of the 20^th century.  Ohio went to every winner between 1896 and 2016 but two (1944 and 1960), and Florida to every winner but two (1960 and 1992) from 1928 through 2016.  If you’ve kept up with my work, then you understand that Florida and Ohio should have retained their predictive bellwether statuses in 2020.  I will also concede that both appear to be reliably Republican at this point, and are likely to phase out for new bellwethers, perhaps like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, if we can ever get our rat’s nest of an elections system cleaned out.

Even if Florida is going red no matter who gets nominated, it still provides an excellent gage of the working-class sentiment in this country, extending beyond the normal “white working-class” political language and getting all the way down to the emerging minority working classes.  The Sunshine State contains a large population of two out of the three minority groups that vote majority Republican – Venezuelan-Americans and Cuban-Americans (the other group is Vietnamese-Americans).

In 2016, I predicted the outcome of every state perfectly, and one of the gages I used to measure my predictions was Ohio.  The media had tried to sneak it out through polling that Trump was going to carry it, and their numbers were far too large to coincide with Democrat blowouts in Pennsylvania and Michigan.  A quick read of Pennsylvania’s voter registration, and the fact that Obama’s 2012 margins were roughly half of what they were in 2008, was enough for me to predict those 36 electoral votes (now 34) would go to Trump, and they did.

For the sake of this exercise, I am analyzing six states (including five that will be instrumental in deciding the winner) as to where they fall for a given presidential result in Florida.  They are Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  One of the great tells that the 2020 election was fraudulent is the fact that Pennsylvania and Michigan went left, while Florida went right.  Since New Deal era politics began in 1932, Pennsylvania and Florida have moved in the same direction in every election.  If Florida was more Republican as a margin (or less Democrat), the same shift was observed in Pennsylvania.  Michigan has the same ties to both states, with a lone exception occurring in 1944 when it trickled 1.3% left.  Since 1952, all three have moved in the same direction.  In 2020, Florida became 2.2% more Republican, but despite massive GOP vote gains, Pennsylvania and Michigan kicked off to the left.

It doesn’t take rocket science to arrive at a hypothesis for Florida’s 2024 race.  It is going to be redder than it has been in a presidential race since 1988, likely going to Trump by double digits, which would represent a minimum seven-point move to the right from 2020, when I believe the margin was held artificially low by mail-in balloting fraud to mask the movement of other states.  For Trump going back in the White House, simply winning Florida is the first step toward getting there – remember, Florida aligned with all presidential winners from 1928 through 2016 except for two, and:

States never won without Florida voting Republican since 1952

Pennsylvania

Wisconsin

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Now that we have determined Florida is going to Trump, and it is only a matter of by how much, here are some factoids I’ve deduced about the other six states.

OHIO

·      Another state not in question for 2024, but it has voted for the same candidate as Florida in every election since 1952 except for 1992.  Bush 41 took advantage of Florida’s tendency to vote for incumbents and narrowly held on.  Trump will break Florida’s incumbent streak this year, active since 1984.

·      Ohio has moved in the same direction as Florida in every election since 1952 except for 2004, when the opposition to the Iraq War altered the trajectory of several states.  This means Ohio should win up in the comfortable double digits margins for Trump that haven’t been observed since the 1980s and this will be another major tell for Pennsylvania and Michigan.

NORTH CAROLINA

·      Republican presidential nominees have not won Florida and lost North Carolina since 1960, when Nixon did it.  North Carolina was also coming out of a “Solid South” political disposition, only becoming competitive in the 1960s.

·      North Carolina has moved in the same direction as Florida in 15 of 18 elections since 1952, including the 2020 quasi-election in which the results in North Carolina were disastrously bad.

·      Polling showing North Carolina going to Trump comfortably reflect the Florida vibes, and if left to move organically, the state would likely go to Trump by over 10, especially with 95 of 100 counties showing movement toward GOP registration.

GEORGIA

·      The least correlation of all the sample states to Florida, but it has moved with Florida 10 of 12 times since 1972, including 2020’s certified results.  That means it should have moved with Florida all but once since 1972 (I have 2020’s likely margin in Georgia at Trump +7.5).  This corroborates polling showing Trump with a comfortable lead.

WISCONSIN