Democrats are growing more optimistic about turning Florida blue, according to The Hill. That doesn’t mean just a massive 30 electoral votes. It also means potentially locking away the Senate and flipping the House.
A Morning Consult poll released on Monday shows Vice President Kamala Harris only 2 percentage points behind Donald Trump in the Sunshine State—and that’s before her memorable shellacking of him in Tuesday night’s debate. If more polls that close start coming out, we could see the 4-point lead Trump has in 538’s state polling average disappear.
Better yet for Democrats, a poll released last week by The Hill and Emerson College showed Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell trailing Harry Potter villain Sen. Rick Scott by just a single point.
And Democrats have some reasons to think polls could be underestimating their performance in Florida this year.
Floridians who may have skipped past elections could be lured to the polls by two big ballot measures. Amendment 3 would legalize recreational marijuana, and Amendment 4 would smash the ugly six-week limit on abortion imposed by state Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump has flip-flop-flipped in his position on the abortion amendment, but it seems very likely that the chance to restore abortion rights could boost turnout—and Democratic odds in the state.
If Mucarsel-Powell can take the chair from He Who Must Not Be Named, it would make it much easier for Democrats to hang onto the Senate. And her victory could mean Democrats also flip a few of the state’s very short list of competitive seats, buoying their party’s chance of retaking the House.
All of this represents a big change from about a month ago, when the press was saying with certainty that Florida was “not a swing state anymore.”
And Florida isn’t the only Southern state where Democrats hope to expand the map in 2024. In North Carolina, Harris and Trump are deadlocked in 538’s polling average—and Harris may be gaining. In the six polls conducted since the start of September, Harris leads in three, Trump in two, and they’re even in one. And two of the better pollsters—Survey USA and Quinnipiac University, each with polls released on Monday—both show Harris up 3 points.
Harris winning North Carolina would give her a very clear path to the White House. And should she win Florida … honestly, if she takes Florida, there won’t be any point in trying to plot her route to the White House. That route would be a superhighway. Meanwhile, the biggest concern of the Trump campaign would be preventing their candidate from drowning his sorrow in Mar-a-Lago’s endless shrimp.
Which won’t, of course, keep Trump from claiming that the election was stolen.
