Can Democrats really win Florida in 2024?
by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 04/03/24 6:30 AM ET
President Biden and his campaign team vow to try to flip the Sunshine State in November, lobbing a bold boast that challenges recent election history. Former President Obama (with Biden on the ticket in 2012) was the last Democrat to capture Florida.
But the Biden campaign is developing a nimbler strategy, has money to spend, an urgent need to mobilize disaffected voters and an issue — abortion rights — that advisers believe bolsters the Democratic platform and contrasts sharply with former President Trump and what they call his “extremist” policies. According to recent polling, Trump leads Biden in the state, which has 30 Electoral College votes, but what happens in Florida doesn’t just stay put.
Florida is akin to three states in one – the northern Panhandle, the I-4 midsection and Miami, a tropical sprawl that mixes tech and other billionaires with working class immigrants and expats whose sensibilities have one foot in South America. Florida is a state with clusters of progressive college students and academics surrounding large campuses, part-time snowbirds from swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, blue-collar and service workers, and 4.5 million seniors who hug their Social Security and Medicare and make it a point to vote.
As the president and Vice President Harris race to lash Trump to Florida’s court-approved restrictions on reproductive choice, they launched a campaign ad Tuesday reminding people that Trump has bragged that his Supreme Court appointees made it possible to end Roe v. Wade (CBS News).
“Donald Trump doesn’t trust women. I do,” the president says in his campaign ad.
Fast fact: 51 percent of Florida’s population is female.
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https://thehill.com/newsletters/morning-report/4571646-can-democrats-really-win-florida-in-2024/
