LETTER TO THE EDITOR / SWING STATE FAREWELL

Roger C. Kostmayer

On November 6, 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly returned the right to vote to felons who paid their debt to society. In doing so, they changed the course of U.S. history in the 21st century.

Potentially, this correction in the state constitution means there are now 1.3 million new potential voters in future Florida elections who weren’t in past elections. It also means Florida is no longer an evenly divided politically “purple swing state”. Though few people realize it, Florida is now a solid blue state for the foreseeable future.

Historically, presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial and even some local elections in the sunshine state have been squeakers. In 2000, the Gore v Bush election was within 500 votes before the Supreme Court picked Republican George W. Bush for President. Two months ago, both the senate and the governor’s races in Florida were close before Republicans won both. Those days are now over.

The numbers tell the story. A conservative analysis would start with the 1.3 NEW eligible voters, and then assume an aggressive registration campaign might bring 50% ( 650,000) of them to the polls. The next question is for which party would they vote. A good argument for a 90% Democratic vote could be made based on the high percentage of minorities and other factors such as socio-economics, but a very conservative 76% Democratic vote (500,000) may be more reasonable. Based on these assumptions, if you subtract the Republican vote from the Democratic vote, the net gain by Democrats would be 350,000 new votes.

The dramatic increase in party affiliation, and the attendant vote advantage, to a magnitude of hundreds of thousands of new Democratic voters, is a long term game changer that will tilt the scales decisively in the Democrats favor for a generation or more.

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