How would Florida vote if it voted like the nation in terms of race, religion, and population size? How much is disorganization and low energy actually costing Democrats down here?
Is it really disorganization/charisma issues or is it just that they have to start just running more independently-minded candidates to start winning, like how they had to do with Ritter or the Salazars in Colorado to appeal to conservativeish city dwellers, minorities, and non-Fundamentalists. I mean even though Colorado polls very well for pro-choice sensibilities, Ritter ran a moderately Pro-Life campaign.
Then again, maybe Florida is just too spread out to have a lot of the same sensibilities that are in New Jersey or even Minnesota. I definitely think Cubans should be considered white since ancestorily they are Spanish and vote more like the Italians than the Puerto Ricans. Or maybe it really is the age that does it.
It's just that a state as built up and diverse should vote like Michigan used to or maybe how Colorado or Nevada does. Instead it votes more like North Carolina, Arizona, or how New Hampshire used to.
There have been several studies that show that older Cubans vote like southern whites (presumably because of JFK's screw up in Cuba) while Cuban Millennials vote much more similarly to other hispanics. At least that was the case in the 2012 and 2016 elections. So maybe we'll see the time come when Miami-Dade starts giving 2/3+ of its vote to Democratic statewide candidates? That's my guess at least.
And I also agree with your point that perhaps it's just because the state party has been so weak in recent years that Democrats keep underperforming the demographics of the state. Hopefully if Graham wins the gubernatorial race and Democrats snatch a row office or two this year, they can start to turn the state Democratic Party around. At least in theory, a party should be able to easily turn things around if they have the Governor's mansion. Maybe it was also because Democrats have been relying on "demographic destiny" to turn Florida blue for so long that they have allowed their share of the white vote to erode so much? Even from 2012-->2016 we saw a big drop in the Democratic share of the white vote. If Hillary had won the same support among whites that Obama had in 2012, she would have won Florida by about 2%.
She was polling around there. I think that median voter just held their nose for Trump. Otherwise, Hillary would have taken Florida + The rust belt states she was relying on....if they split instead of going 2:1 Trump. Maybe they would have even won Arizona or even NC if that happened.
It's the base + undecideds. Bill ran against a fragmented right and center, so he just was able to focus on undecideds and that hurt Gore and probably Kerry. Obama just needed the base because Bush's failures talked to undecideds for him. It wasn't enough to keep the party popular downballot, however. Hillary's problem was that she pivoted from the undecideds to the base (the way Kerry did) while Trump made his base.
