I visited the Dem Party County HQ this afternoon and asked how I could help (I didn't get picked for my hotline shift today). They have a goal of hanging voter info packets on 6,000 doors before Election Day (these 6,000 people are Ds and NPAs that haven't voted yet). I took 100 addresses and hung 30 today and will finish the rest on Saturday. It's important to finish through the tape!
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Trump’s path begins in Florida
Good evening and hello from the state of election cliffhangers, where on Thursday, in a rare crossing of paths, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in the same city, Tampa. It’s the heart of the Tampa Bay media market, which forms the westernmost barbell end of the I-4 Corridor, which is geographically and politically in the center of the state (but more on that later).
The dueling visits underscore how the path to the White House runs through the region. Tampa Bay’s mix of urban, suburban, rural, white, Black, Hispanic, working-class and retired voters gives Tampa Bay an Everywhere, USA feel. And its central importance to the swing region of the swing state — one Trump needs to win for a second term — heightens the importance of their visits. Trailing by various margins in most polls of most swing states, Trump is still essentially tied with Biden in Florida.
If the president is going to have another come-from-behind victory, it starts here. And if Biden wants to kill Trump’s chances in one place, Florida is the MAGA horcrux and Tampa is the place to smash it.
Beyond location, the similarities end there for the two contrasting presidential campaigns and candidates. Biden is hosting a drive-in rally to ensure social distancing (his campaign won’t even announce where it’s at yet). Trump is proudly hosting his event in the parking lot of Raymond James Stadium, which as the home of Tampa Bay Buccaneers, fittingly has a pirate ship built in.
There’s an added benefit for Trump: The stadium is a new site for in-person early voting, and the campaign figures he can seriously juice turnout before, during and after his rally. It’s a controversial move that has the Biden campaign privately fuming, because electioneering is prohibited within 150 feet of a polling station, but the rally is technically on the outskirts of the no-electioneering boundary.
The Hillsborough County election supervisor issued a statement warning voters of traffic delays. Trump also plans a rally in South Florida this weekend, and Biden has a Thursday event in Democrat-rich Broward County.
Florida doesn’t so much have Election Day as Election Days. Floridians have three methods of voting: absentee by mail, early in person and on Election Day. Republicans used to dominate absentee voting and Democrats in-person early voting. But during the pandemic Trump demonized the former and Democrats prioritized the latter. So their roles have reversed.
So far in 2020, Democrats have rolled up a huge and historic advantage over Republicans in casting absentee ballots. But once in-person early voting started, Republicans stormed back. As of this morning, the Democrats’ margin remained huge (246,000), but that’s half the size it was eight days ago, according to state data. In all, a record 6.9 million of Florida’s 14.4 million registered voters had already cast ballots as of this morning; 2.6 million are Republicans (38 percent); 2.8 million are Democrats (41 percent) and 1.5 million are independents (21 percent). The ballots are counted by party affiliation, but the votes in them aren’t tabulated. So we don’t know who’s actually winning until Election Day. Polls indicate Biden is ahead among independents, which is usually crucial.
On Election Day morning in 2016, Democrats had cast 90,000 more early and absentee ballots than Republicans. But those were just the raw ballots cast by party. Once the ballots were opened and the votes were tabulated, they showed Hillary Clinton had a huge pre-Election Day lead of 247,000 votes. But then Election Day happened. And Trump won it by even more. At the end of the day and at the end of the election, he carried Florida by fewer than 113,000 votes.
It used to be that whoever won the two media markets of I-4 — Orlando and Tampa Bay — won the state. President Barack Obama disproved that in 2012 when he ran for reelection. He followed a strategy of maximizing votes in the state’s big cities (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville), where high Black, Hispanic and youth turnout helped him carry Florida by less than a point over Mitt Romney, who won the Tampa Bay and Orlando media markets by just a point each.
Four years later, the old rules held: Trump won Tampa Bay by 8 points, and Orlando’s market by 3 points, and he carried the state overall by 1.2 points.
It was only a matter of time before Trump and Biden collided in the same city, so it’s little surprise it’s Tampa. As of this morning, Republicans had cast 39 percent of the early and absentee ballots in the Tampa Bay market and Democrats 40 percent. Which candidate will drive up more turnout? Whoever does could very well win Tampa Bay, win Florida and win the White House.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters...florida-490734