Florida 2004

[Arbitrage1980]

Bush barely won Florida in 2000, but in 2004 he won by a decisive 5%, which is impressive given how tight Florida usually is. Even in 2008, Obama won it by just 2.8%.

Why did Bush do so well? My guess is that he crushed it with retired New Yorkers who were concerned about national security.

[SingingAnalyst]

I don't think Bush's 2004 FL performance was out of the ordinary compared with other FL results from 1996-2008: if anything, Gore slightly over-performed in FL in 2000.

[Del Tachi]

Republican trend.

[Hydera]

Florida benefited a lot from the housing bubble that started in 2002.  Which made the economy there look great while the economy was stagnant elsewhere in the country besides the states that benefited from the housing bubble(California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona). So the economy looked great during the time in Florida.

Plus Governor Jeb was Bush's brother.

And third the three hurricanes that hit Florida made Bush send a lot of FEMA resources to the state which made him look good. (And this was also one of the many small reasons that Hurricane Katrina became a scandal because the resources that were used in Florida after their three hurricanes meant that FEMA's inventory was depleted and new funds/inventory took some time to be replenished)


The Republicans also made a play for the Elderly vote by passing Medicare Part D which subsidized a lot of drugs that weren't covered before under medicare and considering voters in Florida were older on average it helped him.

[The_Doctor]

Arguably, W should have won Florida in 2000 by a point or two; the DUI hurt him there the most. His two point improvement in Florida correlates with a 2.5 point win in the popular vote (a 3% increase from 2000 in margin).

[Arbitrage1980]

Arguably, W should have won Florida in 2000 by a point or two; the DUI hurt him there the most. His two point improvement in Florida correlates with a 2.5 point win in the popular vote (a 3% increase from 2000 in margin).

That DUI story really ed over Bush. Before, he was leading by 2-4 points nationally. He would have won Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine 02. Also, the networks called Florida prematurely for Gore, and lot of Republican voters in the panhandle stayed home.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Jeb was the difference maker and the GOP elected Katherine Harris to Congress soon afterward.