What happened to John Kerry in Florida?

[Arbitrage1980]

Polls were extremely close and Bush ended up winning 52-47, a comfortable 5 point margin. What happened?

Bush's brother Jeb was Governor of that state at the time and so it likely helps. And Bush won 44 % of the national Hispanic vote and with numbers like that likely propels Bush to victory in Florida where he benefited from massive Cuban American support.

That's only partly a Reason. If you look at the County-by-County Map Bush significantly outperformed in the I4-Corridor from 2000 to 2004. He won every single County in the I4 except for Orange where he lost by 1.7 Points. He won Pinellas, H'Borough, Polk (which is more Republican now), Osceola (which was a true Swing County back then but is a Democratic County today)

The Memo still holds true: You win the I4 in Florida you probably end up winning the State as a whole.

This is correct. Bush did extremely well with suburban and exurban whites in I-4 corridor and Tampa and did very well with Latinos. He lost Miami-Dade county by just 6.3%. Trump lost it by nearly 30%!

[Arbitrage1980]

Polls were extremely close and Bush ended up winning 52-47, a comfortable 5 point margin. What happened?

Bush's brother Jeb was Governor of that state at the time and so it likely helps. And Bush won 44 % of the national Hispanic vote and with numbers like that likely propels Bush to victory in Florida where he benefited from massive Cuban American support.

That's only partly a Reason. If you look at the County-by-County Map Bush significantly outperformed in the I4-Corridor from 2000 to 2004. He won every single County in the I4 except for Orange where he lost by 1.7 Points. He won Pinellas, H'Borough, Polk (which is more Republican now), Osceola (which was a true Swing County back then but is a Democratic County today)

The Memo still holds true: You win the I4 in Florida you probably end up winning the State as a whole.

This is correct. Bush did extremely well with suburban and exurban whites in I-4 corridor and Tampa and did very well with Latinos. He lost Miami-Dade county by just 6.3%. Trump lost it by nearly 30%!

However, Kerry did better than Gore in Miami-Dade County in terms of raw votes while a bit worse than Gore in Palm Beach and Broward.

Gore and Kerry's win margins in Miami-Dade county were the same: 6.3%. You are indeed correct on raw vote count. Kerry got 81K more votes in the county than Gore did while Bush got 72K more votes than in 2000. Not a big difference.