Except for 4 years ago, right?
And anyway, this statement doesn’t even make sense. Florida’s electoral votes are usually determinative of the national results. It doesn’t “follow” the national result, it makes it.
Obama won FL in 20008. The last time FL voted for the losing candidate,iirc, was in 1992. Outside of 2000, FL has never really been a “tipping” state.
That’s my point though. It’s useless to say Florida “follows” the national result, its large number of electoral votes means the way Florida votes disproportionately affects the national result. It doesn’t follow anything.
You’re making a faulty assumption. FL, similar to IA, is a bellwether state. Rarely do either “make or break” an election. They tend to follow national election trends, voting for winner of the overall election more often than not. Just because whatever candidate wins them is not some grand sign. Now if Obama won TX, that would be some kind of grand sign.
If three states had switched from Obama to McCain, we’d have president McCain, but that election wasn’t close. The point is valid, though.
If they can get control of the state legislature before then, they need not wait for the turn of the decade.
Well, sorta. I mean, if MN and WI switched, Mittens still loses. Even without counting Florida. So I see your point, but it needs refinement.
(My point was entirely tongue-in-cheek, as evidenced by the !!1!.)
The “two states” thing is only true if you apply it to California and Florida or New York, which were the biggest states Obama won. There’s no reason to evaluate it that way. Clinton crushed Bob Dole in 1996, but if just three states had switched to Dole, he would have won! … If those states were California and New York and Florida. If you confine the discussion to states that were actually competitive, if you give the three biggest tossup states to Romney (Florida, Ohio, Virginia), he still loses. Of course this whole exercise is sort of misleading because it considers the states in a vacuum; if Romney had done well enough to win those three states he probably would’ve won a few others.
In the real world, no, this was not a landslide election or anything like it. It was close but Obama won decisively. I wouldn’t call 2008 a landslide either but it was a big win. In the modern political climate I would expect the next few elections to also be pretty close, but who knows - current events, scandals, changes in the party platforms. A lot of things can change.
Oops.
Except OMG did not say “follows national results”, he said “follows national trends”. That means whatever trends you see playing out nationally will be reflected in Florida.
I’m not certain you’re using “bellwether” correctly. A bellwether is a leader. But looking online, it also seems to be used as “an indicator of trends”, so on that use I guess you are correct.
This is a really goofy distinction. Florida doesn’t vote after the rest of the country or something. If somebody wins the presidency, it’s usually because they won Florida. Saying it “follows national trends” is meaningless.
That’s exactly my point.
Why would you design a campaign for a landslide even if you thought it was more probable? If it’s going to be a landslide, it probably doesn’t matter much what you plan for.
Eleventy!!! Heh.
Nice. 
What’s interesting to me is how quickly states can change to and from reliable voting states. Florida is semi-swing, with a slight republican lean. Ohio has been a swing state for a very long time…almost always going to the winner of the election (and Stark County, where I grew up, likewise going almost always for the winner).
But California was solid Republican for a very long time. In fact, it looks like it voted Republican in every election except one from 1952 through 1988 (with '64 being the exception, and not surprising shortly after the assassination of JFK). It’s only been a Democratic voting state since 1992. Texas was strong Democrat throughout the 50s and 60s, turning Red eventually, and now it’s very strong red, though that could change as the minority population increases. If Florida is slowly turning blue (which I have no reason to believe), then it would make the EC near impossible for Republicans in the short term, but as evidenced by these ‘solid state’ changes over the past 30 years or so, it’s not likely to be forever.
That statement doesn’t mean that Floridians look at how the rest of the nation is voting and then copy them, it means that whatever trends you see playing out in the rest of the nation are playing out in Florida, as opposed to more staunch states like Texas, where the populace is so heavily slated that the variations don’t make a visible difference.
Demonstration: if Texas is 70% Red and 30% Blue nominally, and there’s a 2% variation to Blue, then Texas comes in 68% Red and 32% Blue. But Florida runs 51% Red and 49% Blue nominally, and there’s a 2% swing, then Florida just came in 49% Red and 51% Blue.
Quite apart from any long term trends in any particular state, the specific election swing had a much larger outcome for Florida than for Texas even though the swing was the same 2%.
The fact those trends are playing out in Florida is what determines the outcome of the election.
What??? No! Florida almost rarely matters. In recent history, only in 2000 and 2004 would Florida’s electoral votes have flipped the results if they had gone to the losing candidate. It didn’t matter in 2008. It didn’t matter in 2012.
Here is a list of years where somebody won the presidency, but not because they won Florida (Florida’s votes could have changed without changing the election results):
1996, 1992, 1988, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972, 1968…
are we seeing a pattern yet?