Florida is a lean Dem state, the only reason why it was close in 2012 was due to the cutbacks in early voting and the ridiculously long lines on Election Day. In 2016 the demographics will be even more Dem friendly more blacks, Latinos, and less whites 65+. Simple math!
There are so many things wrong with this that I'm not sure where to start...
Florida is a tilt-R state and is typically close on Election Day. Romney ran a rather bad campaign, which is why Obama managed to eke out a victory. Under normal circumstances it would go Republican. While long-term demographics look to work in favor of the Democrats, it will remain Republican in the short term, at least till 2020.
Romney probably lost Florida with the inane ad trying to link the President to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. It reached the target audience (Cuban-Americans) but it probably also offended them. President Obama has done nothing to warm up to Fidel or Raul Castro or to Hugo Chavez, and Cuban-Americans know that. All that he has done is to make it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit Cuba and see relatives. If anything that may do more to subvert the Castro regime (should it survive Fidel) than anything else.
The ad was a lie. Guess who else lies a lot about political realities? It's a political leader who lives about a hundred miles south of Key West, Florida. Republican attacks on Fidel Castro as a rule have had a factual basis, Castro supplying much of that basis. Attempting to connect President Obama to Castro or Chavez, in contrast, has no factual basis. The Cuban-American population that used to be reliably Republican in Florida split nearly 50-50.
I suspect that Cuban-Americans have no use for deceitful propaganda in America, especially if it appears in Spanish, because such reminds them of someone that they still despise. It was also an insult to Spanish-speaking Floridians who are not Cuban-Americans.
Republicans can take heart: the consequences of that short-lived ad will vanish long before 2016. Florida tilts R and has been, despite its size, the tipping-pint state in only one recent Presidential election. Heck, it went only once for Bill Clinton, who had 370+ electoral votes twice. Florida would have been the difference between 384 and 409 electoral votes for Bill Clinton in 1992, probably the second-to-last realignment election in American electoral history.
So how close is Florida to being a tipping-point state in recent history?
Year Dem loses FL Dem wins FL Reality Tipping-point State
1992 384 409 Clinton 370 TN
1996 316 341 Clinton 379 PA
2000 266 291 Dubya 272 FL
2004 298 316 Dubya 286 OH
2008 310 337 Obama 365 IA
2012 303 332 Obama 332 CO? PA?
...only in 2000, when Al Gore bet everything on Florida. That was a poor choice. He should have worked on some other state -- maybe New Hampshire, Ohio, or even Arkansas (where Bill Clinton was still popular and could have campaigned as the best possible proxy).
Let's try the last close election before 1992 (1976):
1976 129 146 Carter 291 WI
...That's right -- Florida was one of Jimmy Carter's strongest states. Carter won a raft of states that Democrats have not since won, and lost a raft of states that Republicans have not won after 1988. Realignments seem to happen under the cover of defeat, with the first winner of one Party for at least three terms finding a new coalition of voters.
Any realignment that favors Republicans will follow a Democratic blowout or two. Maybe the Republicans need to reach out to a constituency that the Democrats now think reliably theirs yet do not serve well because they have 'bigger' concerns for the moment. Republican leadership probably still believes that if it refines its message and has a stronger exponent of its purposes, or the Democrats nominate a troubled candidate, it has a chance to win the Presidency in 2016. Such looks like a bad bet.
