I'll never understand why Floridians keep electing Rick Scott to public office, but to each their own I suppose.
It amazes me how competent the FL GOP is. The party can really be proud of itself, unlike the VA or IN GOP. FL really is a swing state only in Presidential Election years. It is a (light) red state in midterm elections. Anyway, in order to be successful in FL, you need much of this: $$$. And both Murphy and Scott have it en masse, otherwise they wouldn't have won their elections.
Another thing I am surprised at is the Hispanic vote. Romney had an absolutely terrible performance among this voting group (lost it by 21 points). However, in all the recent polls, Hispanic voters are either leaning towards the Republican candidate (Rubio/Bondi) or slightly leaning towards the Democrat (Clinton/Murphy against Atwater) or tied (Atwater/Nelson vs. Scott lol) but it's nowhere near the blowout that Romney faced. I thought Hispanics are trending hard Dem, but this poll may be evidence that the opposite is true. It can't just be a sampling error because many polls (not just PPP) show this. Was Romney just such a terrible fit for Hispanics?
Well, Romney did worse than Generic R among hispanics because of his self-deportation comments and his far-right pandering during the primary. I believe the 2014 National Hispanic Vote was ~36% GOP, 9% better than what Romney got. Some of that is from the wave, but some of that is simple absence of self-deportation comments and the like.
And the fact remains that as long as the GOP matches the Romney white vote performance and picks up a good 4-5% or so from hispanics, they probably get florida back in presidential elections.
