Florida Democratic Problems Extend Beyond Dade

On The Other Florida Democratic Crisis

I think it's fairly well known that I'm very, very, very low on the chances of Democrats winning Florida in 2022 - especially the Senate seat - but Ron DeSantis just made an ass out of himself by proclaiming February 6th Ronald Reagan Day, so let's talk about whether or not he can be beaten.

Spoiler alert: we're not talking about Dade much.

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I don't spend much time talking about Democratic losses in Hispanic areas for a simple reason: fuck if I know. I'm a white Canadian who doesn't know how to speak any Spanish and cannot credibly claim any sort of insight into movements of Hispanic voters. There are a whole lot of plausible-sounding theories for the big swing against Democrats with Hispanics, but "plausibly true" and "true" are two different categories. I'm not really in the position to say whether or not the myriad of plausible explanations are true or not, so I avoid the topic - which is not a reflection of its importance, but of my own impotence on the topic.

So, for this thought exercise, let's assume that Democrats can lock in their 2018 performance with non-white voters again in the 2022 Governor's race. Let's say that they can get Hispanic and Black levels of support back to the 70/29 victory they won with non-white voters in 2018, which would consequently lead to fixing at least some of the problem in Dade. This is merely as a thought exercise, designed to illustrate a point. All the pain of 2020 wasn't just in the gut punch Dade packed. It's also in the four Congressional Districts that surround urban Tampa - and they show that while fixing Dade is a necessary condition of success in Florida, it's not the only one.

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These are the five Tampa area Congressional Districts - 14 is Tampa proper, 13 in Democratic, centered on Pinellas, and 12, 15, and 16 are Republican held suburban seats that also stretch out to some more rural areas. In 2018, it was Democratic overperformance in areas like this that made up for the fact that Rick Scott and DeSantis substantially - and I mean *substantially* - outran Trump with Cubans. Even though those two races didn't flip, Democrats still came closer to winning them than they did to winning in 2016. It was clear for months leading up to 2020 that a Democratic coalition that would win in Florida would have to run ahead of Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum in the suburbs if they wanted to win - and while Miami Dade ensured that they wouldn't win, they weren't winning anyways. The biggest consequence of Miami Dade's huge gutpunch was merely shifting attention away from the state early on in the night on November 3rd.

If you look at the 2018-2020 swing in those four suburban Tampa Districts - CDs 12, 13, 15, and 16 - you'll see why Democrats weren't winning the state even without the Dade disaster. In places they needed to go forward, they went backward. The 12th shifted 2.9% right in two years, which was almost perfectly in line with the statewide swing of 3% (DeSantis/Gillum margins to Biden/Trump). The 13th swung even more, a 3.5% swing in the coastal seat to the President. The 15th was a more muted swing of 1.5% against Democrats, and even in the 16th, the only one of the seats that didn't go backwards, the swing to Biden was only 0.1%.

Why did these suburban whites shift against us? No idea. The Fox Exits back up that our problem was with educated whites - we went from losing non-degree whites in 2018 by 28% to losing them by 29% two years later, but that gap went from 7% to 13% with college whites. The polls didn't see it coming at all - again, never trust US polls - but that's what happened. You can fix the Hispanic problems all you want, but you're not winning Florida while you're still bleeding in the rurals if you can't consolidate and build on gains in the suburbs.

So, what should the Democratic Party do down there? Call everyone who knocked on doors in north Fulton, north DeKalb, and Forsyth counties in Georgia and ask them how they messaged to well-off white social liberals? I'm not even really joking, because the story of Georgia was the success of Biden, Ossoff, and Warnock with those voters as much as anything - Forsyth had the biggest (as far as I can tell) swing in the state from Abrams to Ossoff, and Forsyth was a whites only county into the 90s. It was where rich whites went to avoid meeting Black people, and now it's giving Democrats the biggest swing in the state.

There is no reason to believe that there is something that precludes Democrats from succeeding in Georgia but not Florida with these voters. In Georgia, degree-holding whites shifted 12% left from 2018 to 2020, and in Florida then went 6% the other way. There is no plausible reason this is the case - especially given the fact that we are dealing with a two year window. It's not that Boomer retirees moved to Florida overwhelmingly, because while I agree those Boomer retirees suck, because if it was *solely* Boomer retirees, then you'd see some similar pullback in Arizona degree whites - which stayed flat from 18 to 20. There was a failure of Democrats in the state to message to these voters - and they ended up paying the price.

What does it mean moving forward? It's a matter of perspective, actually. If you're a Florida pessimist, you'd look at those areas and say that the state party is a disaster and this is all a nightmare. But, if you want to be a Florida Democratic optimist - which I used to be, and now will never be again - the case is pretty easy as well. Low hanging fruit, areas that are willing to vote more Democratic than they did, just have to refocus on these areas. It's a compelling argument, I guess. But whether it augers future success or future failure, it's inarguable that the failures with white degree holders - as exemplified by the Tampa-region suburbs - also cost Democrats the state in 2020. To win in 2022, they'll need to fix both their Hispanic crisis but also this one. Failure to appreciate the role that educated whites played in 2020's failure will just ensure it happens again.