Donald Trump’s lead in Florida has shrunk significantly from 135,000 on the Wednesday after the election to 114,000 today as provisional ballots and other votes are cleaned up. While these late additions will not change the result, Trump’s final margin of victory will be quite thin.
Florida is important because without Florida, Trump sits at 261 electoral votes and the election is not yet determined. When margins become this close in an election, many factors can be identified as decisive. I agree with my favorite Florida election insider, Steve Schale ( steveschale.com ), who argues that a decisive factor in Clinton’s loss was election day turnout. My analysis of Florida votes and the CNN election exit poll www.cnn.com/... demonstrate that this late break to Trump was unprecedented and clearly tied to the FBI election intervention. I define the FBI intervention as the Comey letters and the systematic anti-Clinton leaks commencing on 10/29.
This dramatic turn to Trump was driven by a turnout surge of Trump votes and a turnout fizzle of Clinton votes on election day itself. While this effect was strongest in rural counties, it happened across the board in rural, suburban, and Democratic strongholds according to Steve. CNN Exit Polls document this change in the Figure below.
More than a million Florida voters (11%) made their Presidential choice in the last week. Trump won this group by 18 percent reversing a slight lead Clinton had built up in the campaign prior to late October. By simple math, this corresponds to a Trump plurality of 188,000 on election day, more than his current statewide lead of 114,000. As you can see in 2016 the Democratic share of this population dropped while the Republican share rose above levels not seen in this century.
When did you decide presidential vote?
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|
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2016
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Clinton
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Trump
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Other/NA
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In the last week 11%
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38%
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55%
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7%
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Before that 88%
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49%
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48%
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3%
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2012
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Obama
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Romney
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Other/NA
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In the last few days 10%
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57%
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43%
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Before that 89%
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52%
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47%
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|
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2008
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Obama
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McCain
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Other/NA
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In the last week 10%
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50%
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48%
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2%
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Before that 89%
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52%
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47%
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1%
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2004
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Kerry
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Bush
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Other/NA
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In the last week 11%
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52%
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46%
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1%
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Before that 89%
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47%
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52%
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1%
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|
|
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Source: CNN Presidential Exit Polls
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The percentage of Florida voters (11%) making their choice in the last week in 2016 was similar to the percentage in the prior three Florida Presidential elections (2004-10%, 2008-10%, 2012-11%). This would tend to contradict arguments that some new group of unknown voters showed up on election day. There also is a hypothesis that the Clinton organization simply exhausted their supply of Democrats in early voting. To believe this one must believe that the Clinton campaign was dramatically more efficient than the Obama campaigns from 2008 and 2012. I worked all three campaigns and there was hardly any difference on the ground, albeit there may have been esoteric differences in headquarters software. The effect we see in the exit polls is simply too large to be explained by organizational secrets.
Rather, it appears that this group of 1,000,000 Florida voters is similar to prior groups albeit 10% larger. In prior years these low information, low propensity voters historically broke for the Florida Democratic Presidential candidate by margins ranging from 2 to 14 percent. This year they went big for Trump. The fact that they broke for Trump by 18 percent in the last week was clearly unprecedented. It represents a change in the voting behavior of up to a couple hundred thousand low info voters. This dramatic effect in the last week had to be driven by a late shock to the electorate, e.g., the FBI intervention.
In short, the FBI intervention achieved both of its objectives. It depressed the Democratic percentage of election day vote and increased the Republican percentage of election day vote , both to levels unseen in this century. Well played FBI, albeit maybe illegal if evidence of intent could be found. They took a page right out of the KGB playbook and played it like the true ideological champs they have become.