Is Florida turning in to a Tilt D swing state

[Person Man]

Our country is ageing and become more diverse. These trends are equal in Florida and is why Florida may not trend at all.

I think how it will trend post-Trump ( after 2021/2025) or even post-post-Trump (after 2025- 2039) will depend on two things-


1) Will Trump be succesful in reducing the rate of change in the population towards diversity?
2) Will the retirement of the Baby Boomers be sustainable or will there be many more people who will not be able to either retire at all or move to retire?

[Person Man]

I think it will trending R for awhile actually, baby boomers are going to retiring en masse soon.

Haven't they since the last 10 years? I give it another 10 years. By then, the youngest boomer turns 65. At that point, the oldest will be almost 85. Another 10 years after that, most of them will be very old and the oldest will be at or near what could be considered the average age people die of unaccelerated sencesence.

It may, once voters are 55% white instead of the current 62-65% it gets hard for the GOP. On the other hand, it hasn't happened yet and you never know what new trends can happen.

Like I said, look more racial make up AND median age.

[Person Man]

In the near term, Florida trends perhaps slightly D because of its rising minority population. However, there is also the Senior demographic to consider, and here there are two trends moving against each other. On the one hand, GOP leaning Silent Generation retirees start to get replaced by less GOP leaning Baby Boomers, which should mean that Seniors become a bit less strongly Republican. But on the other hand, there are a larger number of Boomers, so even if they may give Republicans a less large vote share, they could give the GOP just as much of a vote margin. Putting all these things together, in the near term, it looks like maybe a slow drift a bit to the left, or maybe just staying as it is.

In the medium term, diversification continues to drive Florida left, but then when Generation X starts to join the retirees, they bring positive memories of Reagan to the voting booth and shift the Senior demographic rightwards. Due to medical advances, Seniors will also be living marginally longer as time goes on, so there are more of them helping to offset the leftward drift caused by diversification. Possibly by this time Republicans might also start doing somewhat better with minorities (on the assumption that they can't do any worse, can they?), which could potentially offset and even reverse any leftward drift.

In the long term, the most important consideration is that the Miami area - the heart of the Democratic base in Florida - starts to go under water. This leads to population loss, many Democratic voters flee to Georgia and other nearby states, which shifts Florida significantly rightwards. One might think that in response to this, the remaining voters in Florida would shift towards the Democratic party because they will care more about the environment and climate change. However, that won't happen because (after it is too late) the GOP starts to take global warming seriously. The reason why Republicans start to finally take it seriously is because Florida is now taking it seriously, and Florida is just too big of an electoral prize to ignore, so the GOP simply has no choice but to take it seriously. So this shift in the GOP's attitude forestalls that.



To review -

1) Diversification drives Florida left.
2) But competing trends among a growing population of Seniors keep things hotly contested and may even entirely offset the effect of rising non-white population.
3) Eventually Miami goes underwater, all the Democrats flee to avoid drowning, and Florida becomes safe R, but loses electoral votes due to the population loss.

They won't just go to Orlando? Which, by then, will probably have a climate like Miami's now.

[Person Man]

They won't just go to Orlando? Which, by then, will probably have a climate like Miami's now.

True, some will go to Orlando, but most will flee further afield, out of state. Like in Hurricane Katrina, most people in New Orleans didn't just go to Baton Rouge.

They eventually came back but I could see a lot folks moving to Puerto Rico because they have higher elevations.

[Person Man]

Florida, isn't the resort like it use to be. Granted, for retired persons, it is a home. More liberals are leaving the Midwest and moving to California, rather than FL.

There is that price difference.

[Person Man]

Although who knows. This time in Bush's presidency, Colorado, though it had a lot of popular liberal views, went Republican by 9 points, had two Republican senators and a 2-5 R delegation and total control state Government. In just a few years that feel apart as institutional changes in the parties helped mobilize different voters. Maybe with better leadership, Democrats can do well in Florida. The votes for a strong D coalition are there at least on paper but the FL GOP has just these amazing social skills and can get a lot of partisan and demographic crossovers.

[Person Man]

It’ll be a blue state in about 30 years when it’s submerged in water.

lol

I've always heard FL's D party is also really incompetent (maybe even worse than ours), which could be a bigger factor than people give credit for normally.

Why doesn't the national party intervene?

[Person Man]

That's why Adam Putnam and Scott are leading

Yes. And the Cuban American vote is an important factor in Republican successes.

The moreover that Florida has elected Republican governors for 20 years, which demonstrates Florida's conservative tendency.

It will depend on how Cubans integrate with other white collar whites in the SF burbs. If I-95 south of Martin county was D+15 instead of D+10, that could have been enough to flip it.

[Person Man]

Isn't Cuban American voters are voting more and more Democratic?

It is true that younger Cuban American voters tend to favor Democrats more. However, an analysis of the Cuban American vote in 2016 revealed that it was far from the decisive factor in Trump's win in FL - in fact, even just winning the Cuban American vote by 5 points or less wouldn't have been enough for Hillary to win statewide.

The Cuban vote isn't really that big or partisan.

I definitely think that something needs to happen with the party down there.

[Person Man]

It’ll be a blue state in about 30 years when it’s submerged in water.

LOL, best answer in this thread.

I think maybe the water will go up 3 or 4 feet in my lifetime. Might ruin the beaches. And get into parking lot. Canal side houses might be screwed.

[Person Man]

It’ll be a blue state in about 30 years when it’s submerged in water.

This. In the next few decades all the Republican voting retirees will have left and the only people who won't be able to leave will be poor minorities

I know the people who live in those future flooded homes. I would say global warming helps Democrats unless it gets above like 5 feet. By 5 feet sea rise, this would be considered a minor problem. By then, we could be half way to everything within 35 or 40 latitudes being either tropical or uninhabited desert.

[Person Man]

Democrats don't need FL to win the election.

This may be true, but if they don't carry FL, they don't have much breathing room elsewhere to compensate for it.

They haven't been able to since 1992. Democrats lose if the election is within 3%. Florida votes more Republican between 2 and 4%.

[Person Man]

Democrats don't need FL to win the election.

This may be true, but if they don't carry FL, they don't have much breathing room elsewhere to compensate for it.

They haven't been able to since 1992. Democrats lose if the election is within 3%. Florida votes more Republican between 2 and 4%.

Nadar cost Al Gore NH and/FL in 2000 and Johnson cost Hillary WI, PA and MI. But, scandals broke and they both would of won, otherwise.

Not with Gore...wasn't there a Bush DUI scandal as the November surprise? And even in both cases, a D win would have either made Florida flip or much more likely than not to do so. I really don't believe Nader was a spoiler. I think their voters stayed home and either 10% of Gore voters eventually voted for Bush in 04 or with no fresh scandal, turnout was enhanced amongst Republicans. That is why Gore and Kerry got roughly the same 48% but it seems that between 2000 and 2004, all the Nader votes were replaced with Bush votes...almost 1:1.