Trump is targeting Ocala and other Florida exurbs

President Trump’s fly-in campaign rally in Ocala on Friday is targeting rural and exurban voters, a bloc that in 2016 helped put him over the top in Florida.

But this year, Democrats are hoping to eat into his margins there, doing just well enough to help former Vice President Joe Biden take the state. Both campaigns view a victory in Florida as crucial to winning the White House.

In 2016, Trump exceeded 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s votes by the tens of thousands in exurban counties, including Lake, Marion, Volusia, Brevard, and especially Hernando and Citrus north of Tampa. That enabled him to pull ahead of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by almost

113,000 votes and win the state by 1.2 percentage points.

So four years later, Trump’s visit to Ocala, almost exactly to the day after a similar campaign stop in 2016, makes sense.

“He’s going to these areas because he needs them to show up,” said Matthew Isbell, who runs the MCI Maps website devoted to political mapmaking and analysis.

“The last thing he wants is a sort of fatalistic attitude from his supporters who think that maybe the election is doomed and they don’t show up,” Isbell said. “So going into these areas does have a degree of logic to it. Those areas are where a rally is better.”

Josh Kivett, the Republican National Committee’s Southeast regional political director in 2016, said the key to Trump’s numbers in those counties was the RNC’s strategy of dividing Florida into 254 unique “turfs,” each staffed by people with real knowledge of the communities.

Republicans are confident that Trump can repeat his 2016 strategy.

“The energy, excitement and enthusiasm we have seen in each and every county is palpable,” said state GOP chair Joe Gruters.

Clinton’s strategy in 2016 mostly focused on getting out the vote in urban and suburban areas.

This year, Democrats are taking the exurbs seriously — especially since polls have shown Biden leading with voters age 65 and up, a major constituency in the large senior communities in those counties.

Democrats held a golf cart parade in The Villages on Oct. 7, a few days before Vice President Mike Pence held a rally in the sprawling senior community that stretches into Marion County, which includes Ocala.

The Biden campaign also planned an Ocala caravan on Friday, the same day as Trump’s event, similar to ones held elsewhere in the state.

Steve Schale, a longtime Democratic strategist who runs the pro-Biden Unite the Country political committee, said Democrats don’t have to look too far back to find good results from those areas.

“There’s no historical certainty that those places are going to vote for Trump by the same margins they did four years ago,” Schale said. “A lot of those places voted for George W. Bush in 2004 by very similar margins [as] they did for Trump. But during ’ 08 and ’12, they still went Republican, but, certainly, Obama did better. … We’re trying to wrestle back some of those voters that voted for Obama once if not twice.”

Another potential positive for Biden is his strength over Clinton in the Midwest, where polls suggest he leads in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan that went narrowly for Trump in 2016. That advantage could carry over to exurban Florida, where many residents have roots in those states.

“There’s a lot [of overlap] between the way that Florida votes and the way that these other states vote, because of where people are from,” Schale said. “You have voters who have been naturally more inclined to look at Joe Biden as someone they can support.”

Isbell said the Democratic strategy to encourage voting by mail also helps in exurban counties.

“There’s a push to get as many of those people as they can to vote, which kind of makes sense in an area like Ocala or these little blue pockets that exist across the state but are surrounded by a sea of red,” Isbell said. “Getting [even] those small number of votes sent in is the best way to go.”

Democrats are closely behind Republicans in returned mail-in ballots in Marion County so far, with 17,480 ballots to the GOP’s 19,562.

The numbers are similar in Lake County, with 17,809 mail-ins returned to the GOP’s 19,756.

By comparison, in 2016 Trump won Marion County by almost 46,000 votes and Lake County by almost 40,000 votes.

Republicans have usually had the edge in mail-in ballots in Florida. But Trump’s attacks on the process, despite calling Florida’s system “safe and secure” and the state party urging its members to register to vote by mail, have led more Republicans to turn against it.

Isbell said it was important for Trump to increase his margins in exurban counties, and his Friday visit could help do that.

But he said Trump’s campaign stop in Sanford last week was ill-advised, despite the thousands it drew.

“I wouldn’t have had him in Seminole County, where he’s not likely to win,” Isbell said. “Polls show in those suburbs, he’s not popular.”

Trump got fewer votes in Seminole in 2016 than Romney did four years before, winning the county by just 1.6 percentage points. In 2018, the county backed Democrat Andrew Gillum in the 2018 governor’s race over Republican Ron DeSantis.

“I don’t think his physical presence in, say, a MiamiDade or Seminole suburb is the right strategy,” Isbell said. “Let the Republican apparatus try to [help] him there. I think he is doing the smart thing by going to the Ocala area.”

Campaigning in already red areas could be seen as defending his own turf instead of expanding his vote. But Susan MacManus, political science professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, pointed out that Biden is focused on driving up numbers in his core areas as well.

“Each of them is desperately working very, very hard to shore up their base,” MacManus said. “Biden wouldn’t have been in Broward County [on Tuesday], let’s face it, if he weren’t trying to ramp up his base.”

Gruters insisted that Trump’s rallies, which have drawn criticism for packing thousands of mostly maskless people together, were not “reckless” and “irresponsible” as Biden and state Democrats have called them.

“The campaign has taken great care to ensure that attendees are safe,” Gruters said, including requiring temperature checks.

The Trump campaign also ridiculed Biden’s smaller, socially distanced events.

“Joe Biden realized he couldn’t engage with Floridians from his basement, so his handlers decided to send him to the Sunshine State only to learn that there is no enthusiasm for Sleepy Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Emma Vaughn.