Florida Partisan Voting Index 1988-2008

[old timey villain]

Here's a little graph I put together to avoid studying

[old timey villain]

Ok i feel stupid. I put together a map of the Florida PVI relative to popular vote in every election since 1988, but I can't figure out how to post it!

[old timey villain]

ok, gonna try to do that. I actually tried that. I saved my graph as a jpg, opened a webpage with it, and inserted into the image captions, but nothing showed up

[old timey villain]

You know what? As I was creating the graph, I thought I remembered someone else making these trend maps. Looks like I was right! Thanks for helping me out Antonio! Your map is pretty much on point with my results, but goes back further.

1976 and 1980 in my opinion were aberrations, since Florida was more southern back then, and Carter was a southern candidate.

But after 1984 it's an interesting cycle. in 1984 and 1988, it's much more Republican than the rest of the nation. Then in 1992, it swings hard to Clinton, but not enough to flip it, gets closer to the median in 1996 and then falls right at the median in 2000 before trending more rep in 2004 and 2008.

My explanation for its initial swing in the 1990s: South Florida followed the same trend as the NE did. Many of the moderate Republican voters who has voted for Reagan and Bush broke for Clinton in 92 and 96. Counter that with the republican trend in N Florida and you make the state very competitive.

My guess is that in 2000, Lieberman on the ticket really pleased the older Jewish voters in South Florida. In 2004 an 2008, many of these older white ethnic voters who had been democratic for a while moved towards the Republicans- I guess they began to perceive the democratic party as increasingly for young people and minorities. So a lot of those Gore/Lieberman voters voted for Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin. And the trend continues today.

Prediction: By 2016 we start to see a different cycle. Many of those voters die off and are replaced by a younger, more diverse crowd that's more Democratic, swinging Florida to the left again. Of course, older voters will always be moving to Florida and the north looks like it will stay Republican so it will remain a swing state.

[old timey villain]

yeah, it's just hard to ignore a swingable state that's so rich in electoral votes.