Electoral College: Florida Moves From Toss Up to Lean Democrat

Given its track record in presidential campaigns over the last 20 years, it’s hard to think of Florida as anything other than a Toss Up. Since 2000, the winner of the state has never carried it by more than 5 points. In fact, in four of the last five presidential elections, the winner squeaked in by 3 points or less.

But, at this point, this battleground state looks less like a 50-50 proposition and more like a state that is leaning Biden’s way.

To paraphrase CNN’s crack polling analyst Harry Enten; sometimes politics is complicated, sometimes it’s not. Right now, it’s really not. When a major health crisis hits, Americans expect their leaders to handle it. If they don’t, voters will turn against them.

In Florida, as COVID-19 cases started to rise this summer, Trump has seen his vote margin and his job approval rating drop.

In the FiveThirtyEight poll tracker, Trump held a decent — though unimpressive, 47-48 percent of the vote against Joe Biden in the Sunshine state from March through April. By May, it had dropped to 45 percent. He has spent most of June in the 42-43 percent range. Biden’s lead has expanded from 2 points in March to almost 7 points in July.

It’s not just Trump who has seen his numbers slump as the state has struggled to contain the virus this summer. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has seen a drastic change in his political fortunes from spring to summer. A Quinnipiac poll released this week found DeSantis’ job approval rating at just 41 percent favorable to 52 percent unfavorable — a 19 point shift in negative opinion since April.



https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/electoral-college-florida-moves-toss-lean-democrat