Panhandled in Florida

Hillary Clinton’s expected cake-walk to the presidency was shattered in the final week before the general election. This sudden shift stemmed from a number of factors including FBI director James Comey’s decision to reopen the investigation on Clinton’s private email server. As a result, Clinton’s lead which stood at seven percentage points as late as mid-October fell to less than two points in the final week before the election.

This turn shifted key battleground states in the favor of Donald Trump’s. Clinton was expected to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin with about an even chance of also taking North Carolina and Florida on election nigh but ended election night without securing any of these states.

Trump Raises Romney

The sunshine state can or break a successful presidential bid. Since 2000, every candidate that has won Florida has claimed presidency starting with George W. Bush’s controversial win over Al Gore by 537 votes.

Clinton held a commanding +4.3 percentage lead in the Florida polls on October 21. By November 7th, the night before the election, Real Clear Politics, a website, aggregated polling average gave Trump a slight +0.4 edge over Clinton. Trump ultimately went on to decisively claim Florida winning 49.1% of the vote to Clinton’s 47.7%, a key victory in his path to 270 Electoral College votes.

Voting surged in Florida this election season with over 700,000 more ballots cast than in 2012. For reference, Trump and Clinton each received 452,463 and 260,000 additional votes than Romney and Obama respectively. All together, 58 of 67 counties swung in Trump’s favor compared to 2012.

The president elect also dominated counties that cast at least 100,000 votes winning 17 of 25 including Pinellas, Lee, and Brevard Counties, which combined for about 1.1 million votes. He also made major gains in Pasco (+7.8%), Volusia (+6.1%), and St. Lucie (+5.2%) counties, which also hold a large share of the voting population. Clinton managed to win just 32% of these counties. She did, however, claim important victories in Orange, Alachua, and Miami-Dade counties but this was not enough to override Trump’s major in the other counties.

Figure 1: For reference, 0.3% corresponds to a 30% increase in Republican voting for Trump compared to Mitt Romney in 2012.

Trump’s White Vote Overrides Clinton’s Minority Base

Going into the pundits and political junkies agreed that Miami Dade’s Latino population (65.2%) would partially neutralize Trump’s white vote across other counties. So what happened? As expected, an 83116 vote increase largely benefited the Clinton campaign, which collected 82116 more votes than Obama. On the flip side, Trump received just 920 more votes than Romney in this county. As a result, Clinton handily won Miami Dade with 63.7% of the vote.

However, the Clinton campaign and the polls did not fully account for the increased white vote turnout and the high number of Democrat turned Republican voters. Trump won 93% of all counties where the white population exceeded the 50% threshold. Clinton managed to win just 4 of these counties including Palm Beach and Hillsborough.

Consequently, the Trump campaign made major gains in counties that swung to Obama. For example, Trump gained 19.8% in Hillsborough County, 30.3% in Lake County, and 257% in Duval County compared to Romney.

Clinton went on to win 5 of 7 counties where minorities were in the majority. However, she failed to make significant gains in higher black populated counties. She won just three of eight of these counties including Madison and Jefferson Counties where the black population hovers above 35%.

Going into the election the Clinton campaign needed to extract more votes from non-whites and college educated whites. Clinton, however, could not combat the high amount of distrust or low enthusiasm among the general voting population (including college educated whites and minorities), which was just enough for Trump to secure wins in key battleground states and complete the Republican sweep in the house, senate, and presidency.

References:

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/08/501084734/florida-2016-presidential-and-state-election-results

https://results.elections.myflorida.com/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/6/2012&DATAMODE=

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading...