Why is Florida no longer a battleground state in the US election?

(Dan Tri) - Both objective factors and wrong tactics are said to have caused the Democratic Party to lose the state of Florida to the Republicans in recent years.

Former US President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2018 (Photo: Getty Images/Bloomberg).

In 2000, US President George W. Bush won the election by only 537 votes in Florida, the smallest margin ever recorded in US history. For many years, thanks to its large population, Florida was considered the most important battleground state in the US. From 1996 to 2016, any candidate who won Florida became the owner of the White House. However, this situation is a thing of the past. The Democratic Party has not won a state election since 2018. Candidates no longer come to Florida to campaign regularly. Voters in the state are no longer "attacked" by a series of political ads before the election. The Democratic Party can blame the population factor or the electoral district map that favors the Republicans. However, it is undeniable that they themselves also contributed to this failure. According to the New York Times , the decline of the Democratic Party is caused by faulty tactics, both in fundraising and in attracting voters, especially the misconception about Latino voters. "The story of Florida is not just Florida. It is the story of the progressive movement struggling in the South, struggling to win over young black voters, struggling to attract young male voters," said Raymond Paultre, executive director of a group of Democratic "donors" in Florida. "Splitting" funding

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in Palm Beach, Florida (Photo: Reuters).

In the eyes of the Democrats, Florida’s transformation has been gradual, but it has accelerated. In 2012, the last time a Democrat — President Barack Obama — won Florida, all 67 counties in the state have gone Republican. By 2020, the number of Democrats was just 97,000. Now, Republicans have more than a million “active” registered voters than Democrats. In Florida, voters who have not voted (either in person or by mail) or updated their registration status in two consecutive general elections are considered “inactive.” The majority of “inactive” voters in Florida are Democrats. In addition, like some other southern states, Republicans have successfully attracted many voters who voted for their opponents. The party’s ranks have also been bolstered by the migration of voters to the state, which has surged since the Covid-19 pandemic. Florida’s Republican Party is one of the most well-funded state parties in the country and can run its own voter registration program. Part of the reason is that the party has controlled state government for 25 years, which has allowed them to draw districts in their favor. Meanwhile, Democrats have little influence at the state level. They hold less than a third of the seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, so they have outsourced voter registration to nonprofit groups. But despite raising millions of dollars, these groups have failed to register large numbers of voters. A lack of organizational focus has also led to scattered fundraising. After Obama’s success more than a decade ago, party donors wanted more control over their money. They set up an organization to funnel money to small groups, rather than the entire party. The move weakened the party, according to Democratic strategist Steve Schale, because Florida Democrats did not have a governor to coordinate fundraising and relied heavily on independent donors. “When we did that, we shot ourselves in the face,” Schale said. Misjudging the electorate

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (Photo: TNS).

The Democratic Party's "neglect" of Florida was evident in 2020 when the federal party organization spent very little money on Florida. Faced with the weakening of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party quickly seized the opportunity to redraw the electoral district map in the state. A series of conservative policies were also enacted to turn Florida into a "stronghold" of the Republican Party. The "loss" of Florida forced the Democratic Party to find other ways to win at the federal level. In 2020, President Joe Biden was elected president without the votes of Floridians. This was also the first time Florida did not vote for the winning candidate since the 1996 election. Mr. Donald Trump won by more than 3 percentage points, the largest margin in the state since 2004. This number is likely to be surpassed when Mr. Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris by an average of about 7 percentage points, according to opinion polls. In addition to fundraising, Democrats have made other miscalculations. They believed that the party’s coalition would become stronger as the proportion of Latinos increased. They also assumed that the younger generation of Cuban Americans would lean Democratic, unlike the older generation that favored Republicans. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 62% of the Latino vote but still lost overall because she failed to attract white voters. In particular, older whites, those who were retired or did not have a college degree, supported Trump relatively well. Even Latinos did not support the Democrats as expected, due to the Republican-led policies and the difficult economic situation of many Latinos during the pandemic. Statistically, younger Cuban Americans vote not much differently than their grandparents. The 2022 midterm elections are considered a disaster for the Democrats. Their gubernatorial candidate lost by nearly 20 percentage points. They also let Republicans win absolute majorities—more than two-thirds—in both the state Senate and the House. Now, Democrats have shown signs of recovery. They defended the mayor’s seat in Miami-Dade County, won the governorship of Jacksonville, and added a House seat in Orlando. Still, Harris’s chances of beating Trump in Florida are virtually nil. “We’re not going to go from losing 20 points in 2022 to being like, ‘everything’s fine,’” said Beth Matuga, a Democratic political consultant.

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