For months, Florida was losing its edge as an electoral prize. Despite the state’s ambiguous results from 2000, the Sunshine State was no longer in vogue.
Indeed, Ohio has surged as the state everyone should be excited about. Bush narrowly defeated Gore in Ohio in 2000 (3.5% margin of victory), and with 20 electoral votes, both sides have been thinking, “Who needs Florida?” As US News & World Report noted this week:
Ohio is fast becoming 2004’s Florida. Both sides think that the presidential election could be decided there. “It’s our No. 1 state,” says a Bushie. “Our candidate will practically be a resident of Ohio when we’re done,” says a Democrat.
Fueling the “forget Florida” momentum has been the impression that the state really isn’t in play, and that Bush is almost certain to win the state’s 27 electoral votes. The president’s brother is the popular governor and Republicans still control most of state government.
As for the polls, four months ago it looked like it wouldn’t even be a contest. Bush led the entire Dem field by as much as 18 points in Florida. More recently, the gap has narrowed, but as recently as a month ago, a statewide poll still showed Bush with a 5-point lead over Kerry while most states showed Kerry surging ahead. It started to look like we wouldn’t see a replay of 2000 in Florida because the state wouldn’t be as important a target.
As if hurt by the lack of attention, Florida has since recaptured its spotlight and is once again the center of the known political universe.
On Friday, the American Research Group released a poll showing Kerry with the narrowest of leads over Bush, 45% to 44%. Sure, it’s remarkably early in the process, but Florida is central to Bush’s campaign strategy. If he’s already trailing here, he’s in trouble everywhere.
The ARG poll apparently wasn’t a fluke. Over the weekend, the Miami Herald published another statewide poll reflecting an even-larger Dem lead — Kerry 49%, Bush 43%.
Increasingly critical of President Bush on his handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, more Florida voters now say they plan to support Democrat John Kerry than to help reelect the president, according to a new poll.
The Herald/St. Petersburg Times survey reveals striking vulnerabilities for Bush among key independent voters in the state that narrowly put him into the White House four years ago.
More Florida voters disapprove of his job performance than approve, another sign of the president’s lagging popularity since the 2001 terrorist attacks transformed Bush from a polarizing figure into a popular wartime president.
A majority of voters believe that the United States is ”moving in the wrong direction” under Bush — a marked reversal from two years ago, when 7 in 10 voters, including half of Democrats, approved of Bush’s job performance.
With this in mind, Floridians can expect to see a whole lot of campaign ads between now and November. As the New York Times noted today, the initial roll out of Bush’s campaign TV ads included a $900,000 buy in Florida, “more than more than twice as much as it is spending in any other state.”
As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”