and in the area going from Fort Myers to Sarasota in FL SW Coast( Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota, Manatee)...
I'm pulling this out because there was not a substantial difference in the SWFL vote this cycle. Trump's total out of those areas was only around 40k over Romney's. They turned out in massive numbers for the GOP nominee, but they always do that.
-Except Donald Trump improved over Romney in the rural panhandle. I was kind of surprised by that myself.
Marginally, and by relatively unimportant numbers (in real numbers he got maybe 40k more votes). Clinton did better in Duval than any Dem since '76, which is what really matters in the region. I-10 did its job—the loss came from other parts of the state.
Seems like Trump did a lot better than Romney among "ethnic" whites (e.g., Italians, Eastern Euro, Catholics).
There is very little "ethnic" identity that exists among Floridians. This is not a useful way to distinguish among different groups of voters.
in the days just prior Election, I read some pieces even talking about how Dems were going to flip historically Republican Polk County in I-4, which actually Trump ended up winning by a double margin respect to Romney's
Talk about Clinton winning Imperial Polk was based largely on the early vote, all of which pointed to a Clinton win statewide. She had a 10-point edge in Hillsborough, the lead in Duval, and had banked 100K out of Orange and 200K out of both Broward and Dade. All the signs out of early voting suggested she'd win, and Trump was only able to win through a massive turnout on Election Day.
I was surprised to see that demographically these aren't counties overwhelmingly white, so I'm even more upset that Trump gained there the votes he needed to win Florida...what did happen there?
The loss happened specifically in suburban/exurban I-4—Schale did the numbers, and by pulling out the big urban counties in I-4 (Hills/Pinellas in the Bay, Orange/Osceola/Seminole in Orlando) Trump improved on Romney by around 230K there. Those counties are all
less diverse than the state, and almost all had turnout well above 2012 levels. I'll put it up to increased turnout among infrequent white voters that wouldn't be captured by turnout models.
Florida's 2016 results should remind everyone that Florida is still a southern state in many ways. At some point the Democrats will max out of Hispanic and college-educated areas. Pinellas county is a good example of a place where conventional wisdom would've said Clinton would win cuz it was suburban/urban, but in reality it's very working class.
I wouldn't describe Pinellas as "very working class." It's just a county that's always been close in both party registration and election results—it was the first place Republicans made significant victories in the state following Reconstruction. Save for Gore in 2000 (and that's debatable) it's gone with the statewide winner in every Presidential election since 1980. As for culture, it's more Midwestern than Southern.
