Tuesday is primary election day in Florida. Voters will have their say on their next governor, U.S. Senator, members of Congress and a whole host of local officials.<\/p>\n
But what is the mood of the electorate? WUSF\u2019s Steve Newborn talked with Frank Orlando, a political science professor at Saint Leo University, about what might be different this year.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been hearing a lot about the \u201csour\u201d mood of the electorate. What are you hearing out there? Is there anything that really kind of piques your interest that might be different this time around than what we\u2019ve been seeing maybe in past elections?<\/p>\n
Frank Orlando: I agree that the electorate\u2019s probably not super happy coming into the midterms, but to be honest, electorates usually aren\u2019t happy going into midterms. We\u2019ve seen this pattern for most of the 21st century and into the 20th century, of the incumbent party and the presidency having a difficult time during midterms.<\/p>\n
This year, perhaps in particular, because of malaise over gas prices, over things like inflation eating into any wage growth people have had. These are things that people don\u2019t like, and the out party can exploit them.<\/p>\n
And we think that overall, nationally, this is going to be a year where Republicans are probably going to be playing defense. The national mood, in terms of you know the generic ballot and things like this, seems to point towards a Democratic plus 6 or plus 7 environment, compared to where it\u2019s been, but we also have to look at that in terms of Florida and how Florida is different than the rest of the country.<\/p>\n
If you look at a lot of other states, for example, Michigan or Georgia or North Carolina, President Trump\u2019s approval rating is underwater. Here, in Florida, he\u2019s kind of treading water, right? I think in the most recent average of all the approval polls, he\u2019s plus 2, which is different than what we see in a lot of other places. And so, Florida, although we don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be the romp that it was in 2024, might be a little bit less susceptible to this Democratic surge than we see in other places.<\/p>\n
So in essence, President Trump has coattails here that somebody like Ashley Moody or Byron Donalds \u2014 if they get elected, would grab onto very tightly, right?<\/p>\n
Yeah, it\u2019s interesting looking at different states, looking at different races. I am originally from Michigan and visited over the summer in a little bit of time off, and I was able to watch some advertisements there, and you\u2019ve got Republicans in districts that voted for Trump and a state that voted for Trump. The \u201cT\u201d word is never mentioned. There\u2019s no pictures with Donald Trump. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to be the case for some of the races that we see, in the Senate race, and the gubernatorial race that we see coming up this fall. Maybe not laying on as thick as it has been in the past, but it\u2019s definitely not the big negative here that it is in other places.<\/p>\n
So Byron Donalds used the Trump endorsement to be able to really put his stamp on the Republican primary. But I do think, conversely, someone like David Jolly is going to do the best he can to link Donalds\u2019 to the unpopular aspects of the Trump presidency in his bid to try to secure the Democratic voters, to try to convince them that he is a tried and true Democrat, but also to link back to people like him, who are perhaps former Republicans that don\u2019t like President Trump, and so Trump isn\u2019t a bad word in Florida. Might even have some coattails in certain places, but probably isn\u2019t the overwhelming electoral benefit that he was even as recently as two years ago.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting you mentioned going back to Michigan. So we\u2019re seeing in a lot of maybe the northern, more liberal states, that kind of Democratic Socialist tilt, but not here, right? Do you think it\u2019s going to have much pull on the progressive wing of the Democrats here?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t. I\u2019ve talked even with Democratic practitioners in the state, people that work for you know the Democratic Party that work on the campaigns, they don\u2019t see as much of a groundswell of support. And I think part of that is just the makeup of the Democratic electorate in Florida. That makeup is different than in Michigan or New York. If Democrats are going to succeed in Florida, they need to run up the margins with African American voters, and they need to do really well with Latino voters. That\u2019s not usually the recipe that has worked for DSA candidates, as we\u2019ve seen, and if we look at the (Michigan) (Abdul) El Sayed primary, he did really well with high-education, white liberal voters. He did not do very well in places like Detroit and Flint, which are heavily African American. And so in places like North Florida, with with strong African American presence, I don\u2019t think DSA candidates are very popular.<\/p>\n
And also, if we look at Democratic power in South Florida, even among possible Latino voters, we know that the word \u201csocialist\u201d is not the word you want to use, and so Florida is a tough place for the DSA to take root. Obviously, in places like Gainesville and in college towns, you\u2019re going to see this, but demographically, probably not a strong place for the DSA. Democrats are going to have to run a different playbook here, and we see what they\u2019re trying.<\/p>\n
So the question in a lot of Democrats\u2019 minds: you have a middle of the road candidate like David Jolly running for governor. Does he have enough pull to pull in those more progressive voters from the Democratic left, or is he going to reach for the great center out there?<\/p>\n
I think very unfortunately, (Orange County Mayor and candidate) Jerry Demings leaving the race with health concerns, meant that he didn\u2019t really have to fight a very tough primary. Demings was probably the only person that could have given him a tough battle. And when that ended, he didn\u2019t really need to worry about that. And so, in some ways, he didn\u2019t need to stake out any claims there, and it gives him kind of free rein to do what he needs in in the general election. But on the other hand, it could be a negative in the fact that he didn\u2019t really have to test these messages to progressive voters or try to win them over, and so we\u2019re talking about like the enthusiasm gap. Are progressive voters going to be enthusiastic to vote for David Jolly? I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n
As we know, the Democratic Party in Florida has tried the ex-Republican running statewide in the past. It has not yet worked, but maybe this time it will. But the thing that David Jolly needs to hang his hat on is this is about as good of a year as he\u2019s going to have to run in an open seat against a Republican candidate that, despite being endorsed by Donald Trump still isn\u2019t really cracking 50% in the primary polls, let alone the general election polls. So not exactly a juggernaut of a candidate.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s going to happen, this is the year for it to happen. He still has ground to make up, but a lot of it is going to turn on what happens nationally over the next few months, right? What happens with inflation? What happens with Iran? What happens with some of these other things? And if we see status quo, despite Jolly running a great campaign, I mean, we think about where the state was in 2024. You know, you got to make up about 15 points, right? And so, even in a wave-type year, you need something extraordinary, right?<\/p>\n
Donald Trump is being a little bit complicit in terms of the fact that people aren\u2019t super happy with the direction of the country. But Donalds, if he doesn\u2019t run a good campaign, if things emerge during the campaign that make him a damaged candidate, could also help. You know, sometimes you can run a great campaign, and Jolly\u2019s going to have to think about how do I energize progressives while keeping centrists. But sometimes you need a lot of luck in a state like Texas or a state like Florida, where you\u2019ve got a lot of ground to make up.<\/p>\n
The fact that Donalds is Black and would become the first Black governor of Florida, do you think he\u2019s going to siphon off maybe a significant portion of the Democrats\u2019 most reliable demographic?<\/p>\n
I would say we haven\u2019t necessarily seen Black Republicans overperform among Black voters in general elections in a variety of different states. Let\u2019s say John James in Michigan, who ran as a Black Republican, and people thought, well, maybe he\u2019ll be able to siphon off votes in Detroit and Flint \u2013 he was just as unpopular in those places as a white Republican.<\/p>\n
I think the thing that maybe works against Donalds here is where he\u2019s from in the state, and his base of support is not a large African American area, and so he hasn\u2019t really had to make overtures to those voters. And quite frankly, that\u2019s the kind of thing I\u2019ll see it when I believe it.<\/p>\n
I think the bigger question is, can David Jolly energize those voters to vote? Trump will get you so far in the fact that people just don\u2019t like him and want to vote against him. But in a midterm election, we know voter turnout is lower, and we know sometimes African-American turnout is lower in a non-presidential year. Does David Jolly have enough juice with those voters to get them to turn out to vote? Because I don\u2019t see Donald\u2019s doing a superb job, or, quite honestly, Donald Trump did by Republican standards, a decent job among African American voters. I don\u2019t see him really improving too much on what Trump was able to do.<\/p>\n
Any final thoughts you have on this primary election, the mood of the electorate, the general wave that might be coming?<\/p>\n
I think the thing that I\u2019m going to be most interested in is turnout, both Republicans and Democrats. Democrats, I think, were expecting a high primary turnout when they were going to have a competitive gubernatorial primary. With that not being really the case anymore, and quite frankly, the same thing for Republicans, who\u2019s going to turn out to vote? Which party shows any excitement or momentum?. That\u2019s going to be what\u2019s interesting to me. If we see high turnout, it might be a sign that there\u2019s some really latent energy there that could be picked up during the general.<\/p>\n
Steve Newborn is a reporter with WUSF, the bay area\u2019s NPR affiliate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuesday is primary election day in Florida. Voters will have their say on their next governor, U.S. Senator,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-373801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}