Spending the last five days securing your electoral base is bad in any election. The question has to be asked as to why the Obama campaign is spending so much time and effort bringing the President, First Lady and former President Clinton to the three metropolitan southeast Florida counties so late in the game? Two years ago, we witnessed similar late campaign stops from Florida Gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink, and it became painfully clear she had not secured her base and was desperate late on in the game. Can the same interpretation be made for President Obama?
The simple answer is no. By even competing in Florida this late in the cycle and working to excite and fire up the Democratic base . President Obama and his surrogates have successfully worked to increase Democratic turnout in places like Lee and St Johns County, areas the Romney campaign must bank big margins to win statewide. Democratic early/absentee turnout among non traditional voters is up in southwest Florida and on the First Coast, as the campaign has adroitly exploited Democratic pockets in Republican areas through an excellent micro-targeting effort. Furthermore, Florida is a bonus and highly unlikely to decide the Presidential Election. The big battlegrounds right now are in the industrial Midwest and Virginia, a state whose demographic shifts over the past decade have completely changed its political complexion.
By forcing the Republicans to spend big to defend Florida, a state that should have long ago been put in the Republican column, Obama’s campaign is scoring a victory. The big question now is whether the efforts to spike Democratic turnout will finish Romney off once and for all.
As you have pointed out before, the key to Dems winning FL is turnout in SE FL (Dade, Broward, PBC). There’s only 1M active Dems in the Tampa area, but 1.6M in SE FL
Yep
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Jewish support has ditched Obama on Israel. Honestly I’m anti Obama but I applaud him for snubbing Netanyahu. It is about time we based our foreign policy on something other than Israel. I voted for John Kerry almost exclusively because of the neo-conservatives.
We are cleaning their clocks in Palm Beach.
Dems will win…let’s hope Aronberg does not ruin it for the rest of them. Rothstein says hi!
No problem. Just firing up the base. We can win this thing without Ohio if we hold Florida!!!
We went to the rally today in Hollywood. It was fantastic. It was all about the President coming and firing up the base and rewarding those of us who have worked so hard for him, VP Biden and the rest of the ticket.
Gov. Crist was outstanding as well with a rah rah speech that got everyone ready for the President.