Sometimes I'm not entirely sure if we understand "democracy" here in Florida. Besides some presidential election in 2000 that people are still talking about, we could also point to the fact that in the past ten years only six incumbent members of the Florida House have lost their bids for re-election. Considering that there's 120 seats in that body, it's sort of mind boggling.
Of course we can partially thank the Republican's aggressive gerrymandering for that. It's resulted in massive majorities in both the house and senate despite the fact that their are considerably more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state.
Steve Schale, a former communications director for the Florida House Democrats, head of President Obama's campaign in Florida, and political math nerds says there may be good news for Dems in the future though.
He predicts that the party could pick up four to five seats in the 2010 election, and some of those may be in Miami.
For example, of the six fastest Democratic trending seats currently held by the GOP, four are in Orlando: Cannon (HD 35), Nelson (HD 38), Precourt (HD 41) and Einsaugle (HD 40), and five of the next nine are in the Miami media market (Bogdanoff (HD 91), Robaina, Rivera, Lopez-Cantera and Fresen).
What is unique about all nine of these districts? In 2002 (and even 2006), arguably only two of them could be deemed competitive- HD 38 and HD 91, and in both cases, just barely. Today, you could easily make the case that at least six and potentially eight are competitive.Read the rest of Shale's analysis here.
Also, in all nine of these cases, larger demographic and population shifts will almost certainly continue these trends for the foreseeable future.
