New Republic — Favorable demographics and a charismatic leader aren’t enough to make a majority party. A case study in electoral failure from Florida.
FLORIDA WILL ALWAYS CONJURE A SENSE OF DREAD for a certain generation of Democrats. After its hanging chads infamously decided the 2000 presidential race in George W. Bush’s favor, the state has now voted very narrowly for Barack Obama in two presidential elections, the first time the state has gone Democratic back-to-back since it voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman in 1944 and 1948. But beyond just the presidency, the demographic trends in Florida suggest a state that Democrats should, put simply, own. In 2000, 65 percent of the state’s population were non-Hispanic whites. As its Hispanic population has grown, that figure has now fallen to 56 percent. And unlike earlier generations of Cuban Floridians, the majority of whom voted for Bush, the Sunshine State’s new Hispanics tend to lean Democratic. The future may be unpredictable, but the state is unlikely to get less Hispanic any time soon, and neither is the rest of the country. That’s why many Democrats believe that they will be in political control of a country that census data projects to be majority-minority by 2043…
Universal Journal Review 