How did Trump win Pinellas County, FL?

[ajc0918]

I live in Pinellas County and agree with most of the sentiment above. Pinellas is more white than most urban Florida counties and it does appear there was a shift of whites who voted for Obama moving to Trump.

St. Petersburg and the southern part of Pinellas is the where a majority of democratic voters in this county come from and interestingly enough Trump received 1% less in St. Petersburg's precincts than Mitt Romney. However, St. Pete has a decent amount of environmental and far-left voters. Jill Stein did well in St. Pete as did Gary Johnson which made Hillary receive less of the vote than Obama did in 2012 by a larger amount.

I think 3rd party voters definitely made Pinellas vote for Trump. Trump won Pinellas by around 6,000 votes and third party plus write-in votes equaled around 22,000.

One thing interesting to note is that while Trump won and Bush won it 2004, the Republican nominee for President hasn't won 50%+ of the vote since 1988. Where as in every election since 1992 the Democrats have gotten 47%+ of the vote(and 50%+ in three elections).

In 2014 Democrats took control of the Pinellas County commission for the first time in 50 years. We'll see how Pinellas trends in 2020 but if I were to guess I think Pinellas will move slightly toward democrats.