Update #1 Solving the Florida Equation: How to Gain this Toss Up State!

By: Hamilton Ryan

After performing some major political analysis on June 10 I decided to fulfill my promise and do a state-by-state analysis starting with the sunshine state of Florida, which happens to be the state that I am residing in at the moment. So let us begin by taking a look at what Senator Obama stands to gain from Florida. As we already know, from the last post that I made, Florida offers 27 electoral votes, which is quite a big chunk. As a matter of fact, that is the biggest amount of votes out of all of the toss up states. For the supporters, and the campaign this will be the first time that Barack Obama has officially campaigned in this state for votes. As we all know he did not get to campaign here during the primary season.

First of all let us take a look at the gender gap between the two parties. The Democratic Party had a majority of 59 percent women turn out while the majority for the Republican Party were men coming in at 56 percent. Although the male gender was a minority for the Democratic primary Obama still took 38 percent of it. While McCain took 37 percent of the male gender, which was the majority for his party. Although not a major difference it could play a bigger role as the race continues.

Next we must take a look at age, and where it factors in. The Democrats had a larger turnout of younger people then the GOP. The age between 18-29 turned out by 9 percent for the Democrats where as the GOP only attracted 7 percent. Of that nine percent for the Democrats 43 percent went in Senator Obama's favor while 30 percent of the younger vote went in John McCain's favor for the Republicans. This is a much lower percentage for John McCain when compared to Barack Obama. While many will say that the young vote does not play into elections I would disagree. Even during the primary season we saw Sen. Obama almost come back and win in Indiana in a county that was predominantly Catholic. Now if anyone followed his demographics through out the primaries they would know that he did not get the Catholic vote. Instead that was Hillary Clinton's strong point. When all of the numbers were taken into account the answer to why Barack Obama took that vote was clear. He won in that county because of the young vote from Notre Dame University. That county almost gave him a brilliant comeback to win the state of Indiana. So do not ever count the young vote out, and Senator Obama has proven to capture the majority of that age group.

The majority that turned out for both Democrats and Republicans in age were 60+, and in this area 39 percent voted Democrat, and 44 percent voted Republican. This is the age group that McCain thrived in, but that is no surprise because the older generation tends to lean for the GOP, where as the younger generation leans for the Democrats. Of the 60+ voters McCain took 39 percent, which was the largest percentage in that demographic out of all of his opponents in the GOP.

So now we know that the area that Obama supporters need to look to capture in Florida is the older vote, and preferably the older women, but what does the rest of the exit poll for Florida tell us? What about the religious vote? People who go to church more than weekly were the minority in the voter demographic for both Democrats and Republicans, but it took stronger roots in the Republican Party. John McCain only got 24 percent of that vote while Barack Obama took 49 percent of that vote. People who go to church more than weekly voted much stronger for Senator Barack Obama. So the religious vote swung in the Democratic Party's favor in Florida.

I think that Senator Obama's challenge in Florida will be the older vote, as well as capturing the Latino vote. We have seen over the entire primary season that his trouble spots were Latino, women, and older voters, as well as, the white blue-collar voters. Depending on who he picks for his Vice-Presidential candidate these challenges could be turned over to work in his favor. Keep checking back for more updates on how he could turn the toss up state of Florida into his favor.