Unless something weird happens, I don't know how you win without Florida. This consensus about Florida's key role guarantees enormous attention to the state through the 2004 vote. The first is the precarious national balance of power. With Republicans dominating the South and the Mountain West, and Democrats seemingly entrenched in the Northeast, the West Coast and much of the upper Midwest, the two parties are as evenly matched in the electoral college as at any time in 100 years. From 1968 through 1992, the Democratic presidential nominees averaged less than 38 percent of the vote in the state.
Republicans still enjoy many advantages in Florida.
But two other broad trends have put Democrats back in the game. One reason for this drop was an intense Democratic effort to turn out black voters, whose share of the vote soared to 15 percent in 2000 from 10 percent in 1996. In the long run, even more important may be the growth in the ranks of Latinos from countries other than Cuba. Exit polls showed that in the 2000 vote, these new arrivals outnumbered the Cuban American turnout. President Bush seems to share the view that Peterson might pose a threat to his brother and, by extension, his own hopes here in 2004.