Scott, Nelson, DeSantis, Gillum & Beyond$:$ A Look at 2018 Florida Precinct Returns

Abstract

Midterm elections are typically seen as a referendum on the sitting President of the United States. In 2018, general popular discontent with Donald Trump led to sweeping Democratic advances in the national U.S. House, state Governorships, state Houses and state Senates. Only an advantageous national Senate map prevented national Republicans from suffering losses on almost all fronts. Yet Florida seemed to buck the nation-wide trend. Perhaps the prototypical purple state at the national level, but typically Republican at the state-level, Florida only elected a single Democrat in a state-wide race in 2018: Agriculture- Commissioner Nikki Fried. In its two most prominent races, for U.S. Senate and for Governor, Republicans won by vanishingly small margins. Such narrow races, along with the general counter trend to the national stage, begs for further analysis. This paper uses fine-grained precinct-level data, along with the Florida voter file, to examine geographic and demographic correlates of the 2018 vote in the Sunshine State.