Florida

Patrick Henningsen | We're now one week out - and things are beginning to get interesting.

ELECTION EDGE | Our latest battleground report on key factors, dark matter, momentum and more in Florida.

 Florida Man x 3 Reporting for National Journal, Mary Frances McGowan and Leah Askarinam wrote about the state of the crucial-- but largely ignored-- down-ballot battles over control of state legislatures.

  In 2016, Trump beat Hillary in Montana 279,240 (56.17%) to 177,709 (35.75%). Trump won 50 of Montana's 56 counties. According to a just-released poll from Montana State University, no one should expect anything like that in November.

  Remember when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was bragging that his do-nothing response to the pandemic was just what the doctor ordered and how Florida would never be like New York or Italy. Today Florida has had 734,491 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (34,198 cases per million Floridians). New York has had 509,460 cases (26,189 cases per million New Yorkers) and Italy has had 354,950 cases (just 5,873 cases per million Italians). On Sunday Florida, still in the first wave, had 1,870 new cases.

 Courtesy of Republicans Against Kat Cammack I follow-- pretty closely-- the FL-03 congressional race, so I can't say that the report that came across my desk yesterday is as shocking for me as it might be for regular Florida voters.

  Florida, the ultimate swing state, has played a decisive role in too many presidential elections. Every single vote counts in any statewide election there. In 2018, Republican Ron DeSantis beat Democrat Andrew Gillum 49.6% to 49.2% in the gubernatorial race and Rick Scott beat Bill Nelson (basically a walking corpse) 50.1% to 49.9% in the Senate election. Two years earlier, Trump had beaten Hillary 49.0% to 47.8%.

 "...And I Won't Lose One Voter" by Nancy Ohanian Although the states that have been experiencing the most new cases over the last couple of months-- California, Texas, Florida, Georgia-- have peaked and are on the downtrend (for now), other states have started peaking like mad: Wisconsin, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Utah...

 Florida Man On Thursday, Florida reported another 2,541 COVID cases and another 172 deaths (by far the worst in the U.S.). Only 7 full countries had more deaths on Thursday than Florida:

 In 2018, Florida voters passed Amendment 4, which ended the state’s lifetime ban on voting for most former prisoners, giving the right to vote to something like 1.4 million more Floridians. It was a lopsided referendum-- 5,148,926 (64.55%) in favor to 2,828,339 (35.45%) opposed. If you think that overwhelming support would end Republican Party opposition to this kind of expansion of voting rights...