United States presidential election in Florida, 2016 (Ferguson Scenario)



The 2016 United States presidential election in Florida was held November 8, 2016. All contemporary fifty states and the District of Columbia took part, and Florida voters selected twenty-nine electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-President.

Background
Like all former Confederate States, Florida following the end of Reconstruction had become a one-party Democratic state, as the introduction of poll taxes and literacy tests effectively disenfranchised the entire black population and many poor whites. Unlike southern states extending into the Appalachian Mountains or Ozarks, or Texas with its German settlements in the Edwards Plateau, Florida completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession. Thus its Republican Party between 1872 and 1888 was completely dependent on black votes, and the introduction of the poll tax in 1889 left Florida as devoid of Republican adherents as Louisiana, Mississippi, or South Carolina.

Immigration of northerners into the previously undeveloped areas of South Florida, along with fierce anti-Catholicism in the northern Piney Woods, did give Herbert Hoover a freakish victory in 1928, but apart from that the Democratic Party only lost six counties at a presidential level between 1892 and 1944.

Things began to change in the late 1940s, as new migrants from traditionally Republican northern states in Central Florida took their Republican voting habits with them at the presidential level, restricting Harry Truman to under half the statewide vote in 1948 and allowing Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to carry the state in the following three elections. The GOP reached over seventy percent in the retirement areas of the southwest coast, and its success was greatest in areas which historically did not have plantation agriculture and favored little or no economic regulation. In contrast, North Florida's Piney Woods remained loyal to the Democratic Party, even through the 1960 presidential election, in which the Democratic ticket was headed by another Catholic, John F. Kennedy.

In 1964, however, the Piney Woods defected to the Republican Party, voting for Barry Goldwater. Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act won him many adherents throughout the Deep South. Nevertheless, his views on Social Security provided toxic to many Floridian retirees and suburbanites who had been loyally Republican, and they consequently defected to Lyndon B. Johnson, enabling him to narrowly carry the state. But in 1968, Florida went Republican once again, for Richard Nixon, and in 1972, with the addition of the George Wallace vote, Nixon won the state with over 70% of the vote against George S. McGovern. Jimmy Carter managed to flip Florida in 1976, but lost it decisively to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

From 1980 onwards, Florida became a reliably Republican state, with Reagan in 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1988 winning it with more than 60% of the popular vote, and Bush holding the state by a comfortable margin in 1992 against Bill Clinton. In 1996, Florida remained loyal to Dan Quayle, even as he lost the election to Democrat Mario Cuomo. Four years later, following Cuomo's death in office, his successor Al Gore managed to flip the state, and when he won reelection in 2004, carried it by a wider margin. In 2008, however, Florida went strongly for Mitt Romney, and remained loyal to him in 2012, even as he lost nationally to Senator Henry T. Ferguson of Texas.

In 2016, while the social conservatism of Republican nominee William H. Pryor, Jr. helped him maintain Republican support levels in the Florida Panhandle, his proposals for the privatization of Social Security, and his opposition to Medicare expansion, proved very damaging to his prospects in other regions of the state. Moreover, he alienated traditionally Republican Cuban voters, who had been a key part of the Party's winning coalition in the state.

Vote
Of these two contrasting trends, the latter ultimately won out, resulting in a Democratic victory. Incumbent President Henry T. Ferguson overall won Florida against Pryor by 218,563 votes, a margin of 2.30 percent, or a swing of 7.31 percent from the 2012 result. Increased registration of nonwhite voters was crucial to Ferguson regaining Florida: exit polls showed that 61 percent of Florida whites voted Republican in this election, while 94 percent of blacks, 69 percent of Asians, 61 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of Others voted Democratic.

Florida was the second-closest state win by Ferguson after Idaho.