Florida spirals away from Trump
With the GOP nominee trailing in poll after poll and lacking a ground game, a low turnout may be Trump's only hope of carrying the state.
From polling to early voting trends to TV ad spending to ground game, Donald Trump’s Florida fortunes are beginning to look so bleak that some Republicans are steeling themselves for what could be the equivalent of a “landslide” loss in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
Trump has trailed Hillary Clinton in 10 of the 11 public polls conducted in October — according to POLITICO’s Battleground States polling average, Clinton has a 3.4 point lead. Even private surveys conducted by Republican-leaning groups show Trump’s in trouble in Florida, where a loss would end his White House hopes.
“On the presidential race we’ve found Clinton with a consistent 3% - 5% lead in surveys that attempt to reflect Florida’s actual electorate,” Ryan D. Tyson, vice president of political operations for the Associated Industries of Florida business group wrote in a confidential
memo emailed to his conservative-leaning members this weekend and obtained by POLITICO.
Though Clinton’s lead is “within the margin of error for this survey, we would suggest that 3% really isn’t as close as it may seem in the state of Florida,” Tyson wrote, estimating a turnout of as much as 71 percent, or as many as 9.2 million Florida voters overall. If that happens and the polling margins hold, Clinton’s raw vote lead over Trump could end up being 275,000 to 460,000 votes.
“This is in all reality a landslide in our great state,” Tyson wrote, echoing the concerns of numerous Florida Republican insiders and experts. “Based on his consistent failure to improve his standing with non-white voters, voters under 50 and females, it seems fairly obvious to us that Mr. Trump’s only hope left in Florida is a low turnout.”
Trump has reacted to the steady drip of troubling numbers by launching an unprecedented seven-city Florida tour this week while simultaneously denying the data dispiriting many in his party.
“We are winning and the press is refusing to report it. Don't let them fool you- get out and vote! #DrainTheSwamp on November 8th!” Trump wrote on his Twitter account Monday morning before an event with farmers near West Palm Beach, where he repeated to the crowd, “I believe we are actually winning.”
Hours earlier, Trump took to Twitter to say that “the Dems are making up phony polls in order to suppress” his vote share.
But polls are just one reason why Florida Republicans are alarmed. Mail-in absentee ballot voting was once a Republican strength thanks to the party’s organization and years of conditioning its members to vote by mail. But this year, Democrats are showing signs of catching up.
