Sanders' best county in Florida?

[Adam Griffin]

I actually think Sanders' strongest area will be in the north, generally-speaking. That doesn't include the counties that directly border Georgia and that surround Tallahassee necessarily, but everything south of that and north of Daytona Beach.

I've been advocating the whole "Clinton 2008 counties in the South generally are where Sanders 2016 will do best", but I'm not so sure that that applies for any part of Florida. The further south in the state you go, generally the better that I expect Clinton to do.

The issue here (unlike the rest of the South; even though I don't consider any part of Florida really to be "the South") is that you have non-black, non-white voters. You can't just look at black populations in Florida like you can throughout the rest of the South: you have to look at non-Hispanic white populations as well. Even in a lot of areas where there are relatively significant black populations in North Florida, the non-Hispanic white share of population is much larger overall than it is in Central and South Florida. Of course, you then have to control for the fact that whites in North FL aren't nearly as Democratic, but still.

I expect the gradient will look something like this (I'm not saying Sanders won't win counties: this is just how I expect Clinton's share of the vote to look by and large & on a sliding scale when compared to other counties/regions in the state):



If I had to guess, then I'd say Citrus, Gilchrist, Holmes and Alachua will be his four best opportunities.

[Adam Griffin]

Er, Adam, how do you not consider any of Florida the South? Do you not consider the Georgia counties bordering Florida to be the South either?

I consider so little of Florida to be Southern that for simplicity's sake, I just write-off the entirety of the state.

I'm very much a strict constructionist when it comes to the definition of the South! Florida isn't Southern, and of course neither is Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky...or God forbid, West Virginia, Maryland or Delaware. Usually, I'll even exclude those Louisiana freaks for all of that silly Francophone behavior. Virginia usually gets somewhat of a pass with me - even though they're totally not Southern anymore by most accounts - but there's a certain amount of historic cultural weight that I take into account and Virginia's is chock-full of Southron history.

I've made multiple maps with delineation before, but here's the most recent one that I had laying around for occasions like these!