Florida is a swing state again. These battleground regions could decide the race.

[RandySF]

The Interstate 4 corridor

Florida's most famous political battleground and a fertile area for swing voters, the region loosely defined by the path of Interstate 4 stretches across Central Florida from Tampa Bay to Daytona Beach.

The I-4 corridor's political battlefield includes 19 counties contained within two media markets — Tampa and Orlando — that always are near the top for presidential ad spending.

Trump did well along I-4 in 2016, flipping Pinellas County, which former President Barack Obama won twice. In the Tampa Bay area, he performed better than former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in GOP-leaning counties.

But Democrats made gains in the 2018 governor’s race, winning Pinellas back and taking suburban Orlando's Seminole County, which went for Trump and Romney.


Miami-Dade County

Florida’s largest county is heavily Democratic, but with a significant population of Republican-leaning Cuban Americans.

Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by 30 points, which was six points better than Obama in 2012, and she still lost Florida, showing the limitations of a strategy focused on turning out the urban base.

But Democrats have little hope of winning Florida without a big win in Miami-Dade, and that’s a concern for the party in 2020.

Clinton won Florida's Hispanic vote by 27 percentage points, but an August poll by the Democratic firm Equis Research showed Biden up by just 16 points with these voters.

In heavily-Hispanic Miami-Dade, Biden is doing significantly worse than Clinton did in 2016. An October poll by Bendixen & Amandi International and the Miami Herald found Biden up by just 20 points over Trump in Miami-Dade, a slight improvement from his 17-point lead in September.


Fort Myers media market

Strongly Republican, this region includes three counties — Lee, Collier and Charlotte — that are among the oldest in the nation and are known for attracting conservative Midwestern retirees.

Southwest Florida is a key part of the GOP’s turnout strategy and was critical to Trump’s Florida win in 2016. But the region's conservative tilt obscures the fact that there are pockets of swing voters.

“I would say the areas of focus, from my experience, would be Orlando, Tampa and I would throw Southwest Florida as well in there, which is the Fort Myers market,” Stone said. “You have a lot of gettable voters there who probably have voted both ways."

More than a quarter of the voters in Lee, Collier and Charlotte are independents. Biden has been advertising in the Fort Myers market as polls show Trump lagging behind where he was in 2016 with older Florida voters, possibly because of coronavirus-related health concerns.


North Florida


Spanning 400 miles from the Alabama/Florida border to the Atlantic Ocean, the North Florida region encompasses four media markets — Pensacola, Panama City, Tallahassee and Jacksonville — and a wide range of communities. Those include popular beach towns, peanut farms, military bases, college campuses, the state Capitol and one of the largest cities in the south.

This region is culturally more like Alabama than Miami. It is heavily Republican, with a few blue pockets. It also is heavily white, but with a significant Black population. It's the anchor for any statewide win by Republicans.

While Trump is certain to win North Florida, Biden is hoping to improve on Clinton's performance in this region. A Military Times poll released in September found just 38% of active duty troops have a favorable view of the president, down from 46% at the start of his presidency. Biden was leading Trump by 4 points with active duty troops in the poll.

Recent reports saying that Trump called American war casualties “losers” and “suckers” could erode his standing with the troops. There are five military bases from Jacksonville to Pensacola.



https://www.news-journalonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/10/12/donald-trump-and-joe-biden-tied-florida-americas-largest-swing-state-and-key-battleground/5802371002/

[BainsBane]

1. Broward too

There needs to be major turn out in Broward.

[JCMach1]

2. I don't think it is at all. Seniors were shit scared when I visited

In July. Nothing has changed and the gov is just as big a trainwreck as he was then.

Trump will not win FL this time.