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Saturday, November 3, 2018

Media Sugar Coating Bad News

There are just three days left before the election.  In Florida, the GOP is doing much better than in the past in turning out its voters for absentee and early voting.  The figures are public, so there's no way to hide them.  Instead, the media is trying to sugar coat the news in an effort to try not to demoralize the Democrats.  Here's what the AP has to say on the subject:

"In Florida, where former President Barack Obama stumped Friday for Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, and where President Trump was returning Saturday to campaign for Gov. Rick Scott and former Rep. Ron DeSantis, early voting has good news for both parties. While the GOP has a 58,530 vote edge (based on the party affiliations of early voters) that margin is below what the party may need to defeat the Democrats at the top of the ticket after in-person voting takes place on Tuesday."

That sounds pretty even handed doesn't it?  It isn't.  Here's what the AP left out.  With three days left to go before election day in 2016, the Democrats had a lead of 5200 votes; this year the Republicans are up by nearly 59,000 votes.  Normally, the GOP wins the actual vote on election day.  In 2016, Trump won the state by well over 100,000 votes.  In other words, the current GOP edge indicates that there is no surge of Democrats voting which would be needed for there to be a blue wave.  Instead, the surge seems to be in GOP voters turning out.  So, there really isn't good news for the Democrats here; all the good news is for the GOP.   The Florida race is not a lock, but it certainly is looking good at this point for the Republicans.

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