and most people will tell you that without Florida he cannot win. In fact, if you go play with the states at the bottom of this page at Upshot blog, you will find that if you give FL to Clinton it is game over (because of other states now considered out of reach for Trump, at least as of now).
The article in question was written by Michael Grunwald, for Politico. The title is, apparently, The United States of Trump? and it has a subtitle of “In the battlegrounds of 2016, it’s Obama’s country versus The Donald’s.”
The article is about Florida, and why it is so difficult to imagine Trump having any chance of carrying the state.
For starters, there are some basic demographics: Romney carried 39% (versus 27% nationally) of Hispanics but still lost the state by 1%. Trump is polling in the teens. And the Latino population continues to increase as a percentage of the voting population, up at least 2% since the last election, perhaps more, especially given how many people are moving from Puerto Rico (where they are already citizens) to the I-4 corridor. Consider this snip about that area:
Demographics here are changing at an almost unimaginable pace: About 1,000 Puerto Ricans fleeing their island’s financial crisis have been arriving every week. Osceola County election supervisor Mary Joe Arrington told me she recently discovered 2,500 new voters, almost all Democratic or unaffiliated, on the rolls in a single Kissimmee-area neighborhood that was already built out. She realized they were mostly Puerto Ricans who had moved in with their extended families, and she’s added a new polling location for November.
But there’s more.
When Obama won narrowly in 2012, the state’s unemployment rate was 8%. Now it is 4.7%. Some areas are booming, especially around Orlando, which is seeing rapid growth in high-paying high-tech-related jobs. The changing nature explains not only the presence of a large gay night club like Pulse, but how the community reacted to the events. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays experienced it when it held a Gay Pride night after the Pulse shootings, and fans bought so many tickets the team had to open up extra seats in the upper deck. We also read about the Democratic mayor’s efforts at outreach, which is followed by this paragraph:
His pitch for a politics of kumbaya seemed to take on a greater significance after the horrors at Pulse, after hundreds of local residents lined up to donate blood, after an interfaith coalition led a vigil of love and healing (featuring the Orlando Gay Chorus singing “True Colors”) outside the new performing arts center. A local Reform rabbi wrote a Facebook post after the attack reminding his congregants that the city’s “diversity and sense of hachnasat orchim (or welcoming the stranger) are legendary.” Trump’s reaction was considerably less welcoming, ratcheting up his anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The politics of fear can be powerful in times like this. But it felt churlish compared with the grace of a city in pain, and as Trump’s drop in the polls showed, fear isn’t the only emotion that can move people.
There is much more in this thoughtful and insightful piece by Grunwald. You will learn that Miami Dade has a heavy participation in Obamacare, in part because the administration advertised in Spanish in one place in the nation — Miami Dade — in order to up participation in the program. You can also remember that the one county Trump did NOT carry in the primary was Miami-Dade. And while Gov. Rick Scott may now be supporting him, his own approval is well down. Even Marco Rubio’s endorsement probably does not matter, particularly when Jeb Bush has made clear he will not support Trump, which means his network of activists and contributors will probably at best offer tepid support for Trump.
I strongly urge you to read the complete piece. To convince you, let me end by sharing two paragraphs from the middle of the piece, which provide some interesting insights into the Hispanic vote, one of which is personal to Grunwald:
At a Republican focus group last fall, a Cuban-American from conservative Seminole County was asked about Trump’s description of Mexicans who cross the border illegally as rapists. “He’s calling all of us Hispanics rapists,” the man replied. A GOP strategist who was there said he’d never seen that kind of solidarity before. Similarly, at a Democratic focus group this spring, an Orlando-area Puerto Rican was asked about Trump’s deportation policies. “He wants to go after Mexicans now, but we’ll be next,” the man said. A Democratic strategist who watched the session said he had never seen such hostility toward a national candidate.
One more story, this one from Carmen Dominguez, a Puerto Rican homebuilder from Winter Park who happens to be my mother-in-law. She’s lived in Central Florida for 38 years, and even though the region used to be overwhelmingly Anglo—my wife was the only “Spanish” kid in her class—she never faced any overt anti-Hispanic sentiment. But in May, some jerk at the grocery store told her to go back to her own country, an error (tactical as well as factual, if you know Carmen) that she blames on Trump emboldening racists to express their ugly feelings without shame. She’s a registered Republican, but she wouldn’t vote for Trump at gunpoint.
Indeed.