a few things to note: This is misleading at best.
While it is true that Miami-Dade county (which alone counts for 10% of the state), swung massively to the gop, it is unclear if they can replicate a -7 margin, which is on par with 2000-04 levels. Now, if they’re only losing Miami dade by a similar margin to W levels, one would expect Florida to be R+5 rather than R+3, right??
Well……what Miami dade is masking is the more “blue-ficationing” of central Florida, Tampa bay, and Jacksonville. Duval and Seminole flipped Democrat for the first time I think since 1976.
The point is, if the trends in other parts of the state keep trending Democrat at the date they’re going, republicans will need to keep those Miami dade margins as thin as possible….tall order especially when the “Biden is second coming of Fidel Castro” isn’t going to work again.
One Other urban county that Dems need to watch, margins-wise, is palm beach. That could be unique to trump though, but the margins are decreasing for democrats it appears.
To my GOP friends, proceed with caution on your chances here in 2024. Don’t think you’ve got this one in the bag. 😀 trump wasn’t the first losing Republican incumbent to win Florida in modern history. 1992 comes to mind immediately. And then 1996 came.
But a big problem for Democrats is that a lot of the high growth counties are numerically piling on Republican voters. Take Sumter County for example Bush in '04 won it by a little over 8,000 votes, Trump in '20 won it by over 33,000. Even though this county did swing a bit to Biden percentagewise due to elderly voters swinging Dem, Trump still increased his numerical margin here by over 3,000 votes. It's quite probable this county will swing back right in 2024 and thus the raw vote margin the GOP gets out of here will jump by a large amount.
It's the growth in loyally GOP mid-sized counties like Sumter, Walton, Lake, Manatee, Lee, Nassau, Santa Rosa etc. that are causing the Democrats headaches not just Miami-Dade/Palm Beach/Osceola. Even St Johns County, which unlike the list above probably does have a bit of an underlying Dem trend, Trump still netted over 1,500 votes over Biden! In high growth areas % swings are misleading, you need the numerical margin to shrink which it literally isn't doing at all.
