--Kit Seelye NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/national/02ELEC.html Shifts in States May Give Bush Electoral Edge
...Democrats know that white men in rural parts of states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — all of which went for Mr. Gore — are increasingly voting Republican, largely because of issues like President Bill Clinton's personal behavior and recent court rulings on gay rights. As a Democratic strategist said, "Older white Americans moved away from us on impeachment and guns, and now same-sex marriage is a killer."<snip>
For example, in 2000, Mr. Bush won 81 percent of the Cuban vote in Florida, Mr. Gersh said. The Cuban population is not growing, but the voting-age populations are of other Latino groups — like Dominicans and Puerto Ricans — that are strongly Democratic. Florida's black voting-age population, also overwhelmingly Democratic, is expected to rise by 13 percent from 2000 to 2004.
At the same time, Mr. Gersh said, the voting-age population is growing in the expanding areas beyond the state's established suburbs — by an estimated 400,000 people from 2000 to 2004. Those voters are overwhelmingly Republican. "A lot of demographic changes are taking place, but most are offsetting," he said. President Bush's brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, cited such demographic fluctuations last week in explaining why the state's vote would again be extremely close.
"We have more people moving in, we have the third-highest number of people moving out, we have a lot of people go on to see their creator, and we have a pretty high birth rate — we have probably the most dynamic election roll every four years," Governor Bush said in Boca Raton while attending a meeting of the Republican Governors Association.
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