AvaGara's Better Florida Election Map

Since 1950, Florida has become a reliable Republican state, so Clinton's win there is a surprise. Only LBJ in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 managed to carry Florida. How did Clinton do it?

Florida's voting in 1996 shows a few areas of strong voter preference, where one candidate received 55% or more of the vote. Interestingly, the areas of strong preference are associated with certain metropolitan areas.

The largest area of strong Democratic voting is also the largest population concentration: South Florida, including Miami, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. There is a smaller area in the north of the state, around Tallahassee.

The strong Republican areas are Jacksonville in the north east corner, and Pensacola in the north west. Okaloosa county near Pensacola, home to Eglin Air Force Base, gave Dole an incredible 65% of the vote. Naples on the southern Gulf coast, also went heavily Republican.

The cities of central Florida were less strongly aligned with one party. In fact, Orange county, where Orlando is located, had a virtual tie in the Presidential race, although Dole had a few more votes. The Tampa Bay area and Gainesville favored the Democrats. Along the Gulf Coast, it appears that support for the Democrats increases toward the North, which may have something to do with the relative affluence of the retirees in these areas.

WHERE CLINTON GAINED VOTES IN FLORIDA 1992 to 1996 changes in voting margin more than 5,000 votes
County / Major city	Democratic counties	Republican counties	Swing counties
Dade / Miami	88,449
Broward / Ft. Lauderdale	66,375
Palm Beach / W. Palm Beach	49,336
Pinellas / St. Petersburg	31,119
Orange / Orlando		25,569
Hillsborough / Tampa			22,952
Duval / Jacksonville		16,871
Brevard / Cape Canaveral		15,911
Polk / Winter Haven		13,302
Pasco / N of Tampa	12,722
Volusia / Daytona Beach	9,780
St. Lucie / Fort Pierce			7,800
Osceola / Kissimmee			7,665
Sarasota / Sarasota		6,745
Seminole / Orlando suburbs		6,709
Manatee / Bradenton		6,658
Hernando / N of Tampa	5,206
TOTALS	262,987	91,765	38,417

Even more striking than the variation within the state is how voting changed since Clinton ran in 1992. The table shows how the Clinton victory was constructed. Clinton won the South Florida counties in 1992, but his margin of victory was much, much greater in 1996. About 2/3 of Clinton's margin of victory came from increasing his margin in South Florida. The change in the South Florida vote alone would have carried Florida for Clinton, even if the rest of the state had remained the same as in 1992.

A second factor was that Clinton succeeded in reducing Republican margins in Central Florida. From Cape Canaveral to Sarasota across the center of the state, the Republican margins dropped significantly.

Interestingly enough, Jacksonville ended up contributing to the Clinton victory. The Republican margin in Duval county dropped by almost 17,000 votes. In the rest of North Florida, the strongly Republican counties gave only slightly more votes to Bob Dole than they had to George Bush, none more than 5,000 votes. The net effect was that the vote in North Florida was nearly the same as in 1992. It was the rest of the state that changed.

Only a very few counties changed from the Republican to the Democratic side, most notably Hillsborough, where Tampa is located. Two of the three swing counties were in the center of the state, while St. Lucie county (Ft. Pierce) may be becoming part of the South Florida Democratic bastion.

In this election, the pattern of Reform Party voting (Ross Perot, candidate) was strongly rural. Perot's statewide share was less than 10%, but there were some rural counties where Perot drew as much as 19%. In the urban areas, Perot was weak. He was equally weak in Republican Jacksonville (Duval county: 5% Perot) and Democratic Miami (Dade county: 4% Perot).

Perot Not a Spoiler in Florida
Comparison	Clinton	Bush '92 Dole '96	Perot
1992	2,071,651	2,171,781	1,052,481
1996	2,545,668	2,243,324	483,776

Was Perot a spoiler in Florida? Clinton won the state with a plurality, not a majority, so by definition if every Perot voter had voted for Dole, Dole would have won. But would they? Looking at statewide voting in comparison to 1992, it appears that Perot's support in the last election moved over to Clinton. Interestingly, Bob Dole received more votes than Bush did in 1992, even though Bush won and Dole lost.

Background: In the U.S. electoral system, there is no one race for President. Rather there are 50 state races for votes in an electoral college. The electoral college meets in December and makes the official election of the President. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), the rule is "winner take all." Whomever gets more votes than anyone else gets all that state's electoral votes. The winner take all system may create the impression that states are uniform in their voting. For instance, Florida has voted fairly consistenly Republican since 1950. But underlying that consistency is a wide variation in voting patterns across the state that can sometimes produce a different result, as election '96 demonstrates.