Well I guess I'm fighting a lonely battle, but I still see FL as more Likely R than Safe R. One (admittedly-terrible) cycle doesn't completely override the fact that FL has been within five points in the last several presidential elections, and that Scott himself won by less than a point in 2018. The combination of a good D year, a well-run Democratic campaign, and a weak campaign by Scott (who probably deserves some credit for winning three statewide elections, but also clearly wasn't the best NSRC chair in the world) could make it competitive.
I think I would have agreed with this a year ago but have undergone a conversion.
Even in 2018 in a wave year where the GCB was very high the democrats still couldn’t beat two of the weakest state wide candidates in DeSantis and Scott! Iirc the democrats also nearly blew winnable house seats too.
Nelson ran a lacklustre campaign ofc but the fact that even he couldn’t win despite two decades of winning easily statewide really shows the trouble the party is in.
The reality is that the party has had what 1 good cycle (2012) in the last 12 years; both Obama and Clinton poured huge amounts of resources into the state and were politicians who appealed to voters in Florida in a way that not many other democrats can.
I wouldn’t write it off completely over the next decade but the evidence really points one way- I think there’s a danger than a poor result in 2018 and a good result in 2012 has meant democrats still think of the state as closer than it is.
