Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
10 things we learned from Florida’s midterm elections.
Republicans are celebrating Ron DeSantis’s victory in the governor’s race and Rick Scott’s apparent U.S. Senate win. Democrats are left to figure out what went wrong — just as they do every four years in Florida.
Especially when there are close results, there’s lots to churn over, in immediate hot takes and deeper analysis.
Here are some of the takeaways from the 2018 midterm elections in Florida:
Florida is a deeply polarized state
The numbers in the two marquee races show the divisions among Florida voters.
In the governor’s race, unofficial results show DeSantis received 49.7 percent of the vote to Democrat Andrew Gillum’s 49.08 percent Wednesday afternoon.
In the U.S. Senate contest, Scott received 50.19 percent to 49.81 percent for Democrat Bill Nelson, the incumbent. Given the race’s close margin, there could be a recount if the vote difference continues to be less than 0.5 percent after all final vote tally is in.
An NBC News/Marist Poll released Monday found 44 percent of Florida likely voters approved of President Donald Trump’s performance and 51 percent disapproved.
Democratic efforts fall short in Broward
Broward is Florida’s Democratic stronghold, providing huge margins for Democratic candidates in statewide races.
Election after election, Democrats put enormous efforts into Broward, hoping to get even higher turnout. In the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, Democratic nominee Charlie Crist rented a condo on Fort Lauderdale beach because he was spending so much time in Broward.
In the last full week of the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton had events in Broward on four of the seven days.
This year, Gillum made multiple trips to the county, going to great lengths to court members of key Democratic voting blocs: AfricanAmerican, Caribbean-American and Jewish voters, and unionized teachers.
As usual, Broward disappoints the
Democratic Party.
Vote totals as of Wednesday afternoon show Broward turnout was 57.4 percent, compared with 62.1 percent statewide and 63.4 percent in Palm Beach County. (The state’s 2018 turnout was far, far better than the 44.5 percent turnout in the 2014 midterm.)
Broward’s turnout for this year’s midterms was among the lowest of the state’s 10 most populous counties, along with Miami-Dade County at 56.9 percent.
If Broward and Miami-Dade counties and turnout at the same level as the rest of the state, it’s possible results might have been different in the races for governor, U.S. Senate and state agriculture commissioner.
The polls are going to take a beating
The criticism started with Scott, who referred to “all those inaccurate polls.”
Most polls showed Nelson leading Scott. And virtually every poll since the August primary showed Gillum ahead of DeSantis.
The final RealClearPolitics polling average had Nelson winning 48.8 percent of the vote and Scott 46.4 percent, an advantage of 2.4 percentage points for Nelson.
The final average in the governor’s race was a 49.4 percent for Gillum and 45.8 percent for DeSantis, a difference of 3.6 percent.
The biggest failure is in the way polls are consumed. There’s always a margin of error, generally plus or minus 3, 4 or 5 percentage points, depending on the sample size. Many people focus on the precise results and not the range of results.
Donald Trump is a winner
He pushed, hard, for DeSantis. He encouraged Scott to run for the Senate. And the president personally invested himself in the Florida races.
In the last six days of the campaign he visited the state twice for Make America Great Again rallies to energize his supporters to turn out in the midterms.
Both Democrats and Republicans said the election would be a referendum on Trump. Gillum said a victory would give Florida a governor who would stand up to Trump.
Trump won.
On Fox News, the preeminent voice for Republicans, host Laura Ingraham credited Trump with DeSantis’s win: “It’s Donald Trump who won this for him.”
Voting rights restoration could reshape future
Voters amended the state Constitution to automatically restore voting rights to felons, except for murderers and rapists, who have served their sentences.
More than 1.5 million ex-felons couldn’t vote in Florida, and critics of the state’s felon voting ban say it disproportionately affects minority voters who tend to support Democrats.
Restoring rights to those people mean a greatly reshaped Florida electorate for the 2020 presidential election.
Florida is largely a red state
The Sunshine State went for
President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But otherwise it’s pretty slim pickings for Democrats, especially in midterm elections.
Democrats have now lost all but six of the past 33 statewide elections. With Scott’s projected defeat of Nelson, who was seeking a fourth term in the Senate, Democrats have no one in statewide elected office.
Many prognosticators label the state purple, arguing it’s neither Democratic blue nor Republican red. That’s becoming a harder argument to make.
Clare Malone of the political data news site FiveThirtyEight.com put it this way on Twitter: “Florida is red, red, red.”
Broward keeps majority party voice in Tallahassee
Chip LaMarca, who didn’t run for re-election to the Broward County commissioner, was elected to the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. His race against Democrat Emma Collum in northeast Broward was the only competitive legislative race in the county.
LaMarca, who will replace term-limited state Rep. George Moraitis, R-Fort Lauderdale, will be the only state lawmaker living in Broward County who is a member of the Republican Party, which controls state government.
Democrats hoped they’d have two Broward residents in the Florida Cabinet, but chief financial officer candidate Jeremy Ring lost. Agriculture Commissioner candidate Nikki Fried was heading for a recount.
Progressivism isn’t a Democratic salvation
For years Democrats have run moderate candidates, hoping they could appeal to middle of the road voters. Progressives repeatedly argued that was the wrong strategy. Better to run a true liberal who could motivate progressive voters to turn out.
Gillum was the embodiment of that theory. An outspoken progressive, he made it through the primary victory, largely because the three best-known more moderate candidates, Jeff Greene, Gwen Graham and Philip Levine, split the vote.
The theory, finally tested, was proven wrong.
Bright spot for Democrats
While the party’s hopes were largely crushed in Florida on Tuesday, the night wasn’t entirely a bust for Democrats.
They picked up two Republican-held seats in Miami-Dade County.
One was the defeat of U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo by Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Curbelo was a moderate Republican.
The other was the election of Democrat Donna Shalala, the former Bill Clinton health and human services secretary and former University of Miami president. Shalala defeated Republican Maria Elvira Salazar and will take over from retiring U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Besides helping the Democrats gain control of the U.S. House, it also represents a sea change for South Florida. The region will now have just one Cuban-American (U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart) in the House of Representatives. For years, there were three.
Two South Florida Democrats are likely to benefit greatly from their party’s takeover of the House.
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, is now the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee and the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. As a member of the new majority party, he’s in line for a chairmanship.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which governs federal spending. She’s likely to become chairwoman of an appropriations subcommittee. Those positions are so influential that people that hold them are called “Cardinals” because they have so much authority over the federal budget.
Bad day for some candidates
Multiple potential presidential candidates flooded Florida to campaign for Gillum, hoping they’d earn chits for helping the Democratic candidate — and hoping that he’d be in office and able to help them in 2020.
Among the potential presidential hopefuls making the pilgrimage to Florida: former Vice President Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York (and billionaire); former Housing Secretary Julian Castro; U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California; former Attorney General Eric Holder; and Tom Steyer, the environmental activist (and billionaire).