Obama will need young folks, Blacks; McCain relying on older voters, Cubans, veterans

BY JIM STRATTON
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL/MCT

ORLANDO — Set aside the soaring speeches and rock-star rallies, and Sen. Barack Obama’s future in Florida depends on a fragile proposition.

To win the Sunshine State, the Democrat needs a massive turnout among two voting blocs: young people and Blacks.

By contrast, his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, sees a state of tailor-made constituencies: military types and conservative Whites, especially in North Florida; wealthy Republicans in southwest Florida; Cubans in southeast Florida, along with lots of other right-of-center Floridians.

Long a GOP state
Add in the GOP’s famous turnout machine —Republicans carried Florida in eight of the past 11 presidential elections— and you reach the same conclusion as pollster Brad Coker.

“Overall, the state’s long been more Republican than the rest of the country,” he said. “I think the Gore-Bush race in 2000 created a false impression about how even it was.”

At the same time, that narrow Bush win—537 votes, amid evidence that thousands of Gore voters saw their ballots discarded as spoiled—inspires Steve Schale, Obama’s campaign chief in Florida.

All Obama has to do, Schale said, is “just a little better than Al Gore did in 2000.”

Here’s how he’ll try— and how McCain will try to stop him.

Maximize turnout
Obama must rev up voter turnout, especially in Democrat-rich South Florida; his Florida operation started going door-to-door last Saturday. In particular, he’ll court Blacks and young voters, two groups that overwhelmingly support him—but who can be inconsistent.

In 2000, for example, Florida exit polls found that Blacks accounted for 15 percent of all voters, propelling Gore into his virtual dead heat with George W. Bush. In 2004, the percentage dropped to 12, and Bush beat John Kerry by a comfortable five points. As the first Black man nominated by a major party, Obama should get that total up this year.

Places to watch: Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Orange County, South Florida.

Young not promised
Young voters can be all over the map. In 2000, about 35 percent of Florida voters ages 18 to 24 went to the polls; four years later, it was 46 perce

nt, according to the University of Maryland. But there are signs that Obama’s appeal to young voters – especially on college campuses – may be waning. A recent ABC News poll found that the percentage of voters younger than 30 who were certain they would vote in November has dropped 20 points since March.

Places to watch: Gainesville, Tallahassee, Central Florida, South Florida.

Schale is unfazed, noting that Democrats have out-registered Republicans 7-to-1 since January: “There’s no reason to believe we won’t see a huge, huge turnout. The sheer enthusiasm is unprecedented.”

Older population remains reliable
McCain will be relying on middle- and upper-class conservatives in predictably Republican regions of the state, Cubans in South Florida and active and retired military—as well as traditional Southern Democrats— in the northern tier of the state.

The presumptive presidential nominee has an edge in that his supporters tend to be White and somewhat older—a population that rarely skips an election. In 2004 in Florida, Whites accounted for 73 percent of the vote and went for Bush by a 17-point margin. People older than 45, meanwhile, made up 55 percent of the Election Day vote and broke for Bush by 20 points.

McCain may have trouble exciting some of the GOP’s conservative base— particularly illegal-immigration hard-liners—but it is unlikely they will jump ship for Obama.

Places to watch: The I-75 corridor from Sarasota to Naples, almost everywhere north of Ocala—except Gainesville and Tallahassee— and the I-4 corridor.

Hispanic vote crucial
Both candidates will run hard at voters who aren’t members of either major party. There are about 2.2 million of them in Florida, with about 30 percent clustered along the I-4 corridor between Volusia and Hillsborough counties. This could turn into a bar fight.

“Senator McCain has strong crossover appeal with disaffected Democrats and independents throughout Florida,” said his regional campaign manager, Buzz Jacobs.

Hispanic voters are another crucial subset, numbering about 1.2 million statewide. Democrats have a slight edge in registration, but in the past two elections, they went for Bush. A recent AP-Yahoo News national poll had Obama ahead among all Hispanics by 25 points, with 26 percent undecided.

Complicating the Hispanic- vote analysis in Florida are about 850,000 voting- age Cuban-Americans. Traditionally, they vote Republican. But the Pew Hispanic Center found that while 28 percent of Cubans consider themselves Republican, 20 percent consider themselves Democrats.