I've been to St. Augustine this February and it smelled like "riiiich Republicans" everywhere but from what I've read in my life I would have thought the richest county in Florida was Collier County, where there seems to be a lot of $$$ millionaires.
St. Augustine itself votes narrowly Democratic, actually. It's the Jacksonville sprawl in the north of St. Johns County that makes the county so Republican.
Interesting.
I guess St. Augustine is also frequented by many Republicans living in the surrounding areas.
But I decided to check on DRA 2020. St. Augustine proper appears to have voted Obama by 10 points in 2008; Clinton by a hair and Rubio by 10 points in 2016; Gillum and Nelson both by 8/9 points in 2018.
So yes, it's narrowly Democratic. I find that kinda right-leaning for a touristic place.
So out of curiosity I compared St. Augustine to another place where I have been, Key West.
Key West voted D by at least 20 points in every race I mentioned, and Obama 08 and Nelson 18 both took over 2/3 of the vote.
My take is that St. Augustine is a closely divided city surrounded by uniformly Republican territory, specifically Republicans-in-villas territory.
