How did Trump win Florida

[Calthrina950]

At a very distant glance, it appears there were a few states (Ohio and Florida, namely) where Trump made his "typical" gains with Whites without a college degree (won't indulge the idea of calling this entire group "working class") while also holding on to quite a bit of suburban support.  In other words, he made his usual gains for a Republican vs. Clinton while stopping a lot of the bleeding that we saw in other places with suburban voters.

White "working-class" voters gave Trump approximately two-thirds of their votes, if I am not mistaken. And it cannot be denied that his margins and turnout among those voters helped him in Ohio and Florida. Arguably, if they had not turned out in the Florida Panhandle, he would have lost the state to Clinton.

[Calthrina950]

At a very distant glance, it appears there were a few states (Ohio and Florida, namely) where Trump made his "typical" gains with Whites without a college degree (won't indulge the idea of calling this entire group "working class") while also holding on to quite a bit of suburban support.  In other words, he made his usual gains for a Republican vs. Clinton while stopping a lot of the bleeding that we saw in other places with suburban voters.

White "working-class" voters gave Trump approximately two-thirds of their votes, if I am not mistaken. And it cannot be denied that his margins and turnout among those voters helped him in Ohio and Florida. Arguably, if they had not turned out in the Florida Panhandle, he would have lost the state to Clinton.

I know you're kind of on a Realignment 2016/2018 roll here, but your response makes literally zero sense in response to what I wrote.  It would be normal to expect Trump to, yes, match his usual gains with "WWC" voters in Florida; it would NOT be normal to expect him to match Romney's suburban support and support among college graduates ... Trump won 49% of college grads to Clinton's 46% in Florida (and, when you take out postgrads - a group that was strongly Democratic before Trump - he won 54%-42%), and he won 62% of White college grads, a negligible difference from his support among "WWC" voters in Florida.

Trump won Florida because he both made his expected gains - among "WWC" voters and rural voters - that he made everywhere else and because he ALSO didn't have anywhere near his usual losses we saw in other places - among suburbanites and White college grads.

What? I'm very well aware that Trump won white college graduates, and in a state like Florida, his percentages being higher than nationally, makes sense. Of course, suburban voters and retirees played a part in his victory. But Clinton fell down even further from what Obama got in the Florida Panhandle, and the numbers that he ran up in the region helped him to cancel out her gains in Southeast Florida and to carry the state. Florida, moreover, is a Republican-leaning state, and this process which I've been alluding to has not yet finished.

[Calthrina950]

At a very distant glance, it appears there were a few states (Ohio and Florida, namely) where Trump made his "typical" gains with Whites without a college degree (won't indulge the idea of calling this entire group "working class") while also holding on to quite a bit of suburban support.  In other words, he made his usual gains for a Republican vs. Clinton while stopping a lot of the bleeding that we saw in other places with suburban voters.

White "working-class" voters gave Trump approximately two-thirds of their votes, if I am not mistaken. And it cannot be denied that his margins and turnout among those voters helped him in Ohio and Florida. Arguably, if they had not turned out in the Florida Panhandle, he would have lost the state to Clinton.

As I said earlier in this thread, it was not the panhandle where Trump made most of his gains; it was in the suburban/exurban areas near Orlando/Tampa where it happened. This area has many people who formerly resided in the Midwest, and their voting patterns matched closely.

Are you saying that the Panhandle was insignificant?