In 2016, Donald Trump received 49.0% of Florida’s popular vote, against Hillary’s 47.8%, a 1.2% difference that won Florida for him. Trump’s victory was better than Obama’s in 2012, when Obama beat Romney by 0.88% of the popular vote.  In 2008, before voters knew Obama, he beat McCain by 2.69% of the popular vote. In 2004, as if to make up for the trouble the state caused in 2000, Florida voters gave George W. Bush a 5.01% advantage over Kerry.  And of course, in 2000 Bush won against Gore by a mere 0.01% of votes. The point of this history is that elections in Florida tend to be close.  In the last five presidential elections, only once has a candidate managed to beat his opponent by more than 4% and that, as noted above, was an incumbent Republican facing off against his Democrat rival. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s vaunted statistical analysis website, predicted that Hillary would win Florida’s...(Read Full Post)