Question for Florida voters...

[skypilot]

...or anyone who knows for sure. Randi Rhodes was just talking about those counties in Florida that have a majority of people registered as Democrats that nonetheless voted for Bush. Some people have been saying that these registered Democrats that voted for Bush are actually Dixiecrats who never changed their registration to Republican. Randi says that if that were the case they wouldn't be able to vote for a Republican candidate in the Florida primaries. Is this true?

[imenja]

1. yes

Yes, they are Dixiecrats. They've voted that way for a long time. I checked the 2000 numbers and Democrats in N Florida voted for Bush then as well. Look at the counties on the map. They are all up near GA and Alabama. A friend of mine who is a professional historian of Florida confirmed that North Floridians register Democrat and vote Republican in national elections. Apparently some of their local Democratic representatives are still very conservative, somewhat like the old Southern Democrats pre-1964.

[skypilot]

4. How does this work out during primaries?

Can they still vote for a Republican candidate even though they are registered Democrats or does the candidate just run as a Dixie Democrat? I'm so confused.

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. No, in the primaries you can only vote

for members of your own party.

In the General Election you can vote for any party regardless of your party affiliation.

However, the Dixiecrats are more a myth than a reality anymore. Only in Alachua County where Repugs rarely win, do they run has DEMS in order to even have a chance. However, most of the time everyone knows they really are Repugs and they lose anyway.

I will look at the numbers for the local races and post later. It will be interesting to see how people really did vote in those counties.

[sherilocks]

22. "Dixiecrats are more a myth "

On what do you base this statement. I am not making this argument, because I don't believe that there was voter fraud, but because I don't want to see us lose our valid arguments, to unsubstantiated and baseless claims.

[DoYouEverWonder]

23. Because they are a dying breed

A lot of old school Dixiecrats are either dead or have switched to REP. The ones I know are very contemptuous of DEMS because they consider all DEMS to be raving liberals at this point.

Also, there is no evidence that new registered voters were registering opposite of their true party affiliation.

There just aren't that many Zel Millers, even in North Florida.

[sherilocks]

24. That is anecdotal

We need cold hard facts before rushing into recounts in the rural counties. How many new registrations were there? How many were Democrats? How many were repugs, independents? How many African-Americans voted in 2000 and 2004? These facts are available at the supervisor of elections in each county.

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. Actually, the counties in the heart of Dixicrat land went to Kerry

Gadsden
6,253/Bush
14,629/Kerry

Jefferson
3,298/Bush
4,134/Kerry

Leon
51,594/Bush
83,830/Kerry

plus Madison was very close

Madison
4,196/Bush
4,048/Kerry

All four counties are on the FL/GA border. Odd that this pro Kerry cluster would show up smack in the middle of Dixie land?

[sherilocks]

26. These are not the counties I had in mind

These are around or are Tallahassee. If you are familiar with Florida, you will know what I mean. Just being on the Georgia border is not the criteria here.

[DoYouEverWonder]

27. Leon County is the only one that you should discount

the other three are as backwoods and rural as you can get.

[sherilocks]

31. Gadsden has a large well organized African-American

community, plus a bunch of antique dealers. These people are not backwoods by any stretch of the imagination.

I lived in the area, I worked in the area, and I know a lot about it. The counties that you mention provide a large work force for the capitol area. Painting these areas, with the exception of Madison, as rural and backwoods is generalization at its worst. All four have large African-American populations who are getting more and more sophisticated.

You are riding a losing horse on this and you will drag down any legitimate claims of voter fraud by pursuing it. I, for one, am backing out of this discussion.

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. Alachua County is very similar and actually

much more liberal than Leon County, yet all the counties around us went to Bush.

Despite the fact that Florida State is in Leon, so is the seat of government so Leon County is not all that liberal to begin with. Neither are the rest of the counties around Alachua County that much more rural or conservative.

My original point was that the Dixiecrat myth does not hold up, especially when the commentators are sighting the FL/GA border counties has their example.


Edit: Beside, Duval which also has a large and organized community of African Americans and over 19000 disenfrancished voters from 2000, still went even heavier to Bush than in 2000. That just doesn't make sense.

[imenja]

35. new registrations

You should be able to find the info for new registrations and overall registrations on the supervisor of elections' websites for the counties in question. I've looked at them for Palm Beach county, where I live. I imagine the other counties are required to post them as well, because of Florida's Sunshine Laws.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi imenja!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Eloriel]

12. You CANNOT reliably use FL 2000 numbers for a comparison

Why? Because optical scan machines were implicated in the Stolen Election of 2000 as well. For example, in Volusia County, a smart card inserted into one of the optical scan machines registered a NEGATIVE 16,000 vote for Gore -- that's right, SUBTRACTED from his vote totals. That smart card mysteriously disappeared.

Further, and this is important, I think. (Wish I could remember which DUer raised this excellent point.) The STRONGHOLDS (voth Kerry and Bush) are the perfect place to shave votes from the opponent. For example, in a Kerry stronghold, shave off a few thousand votes from Kerry's total to give to Bush (helps pump up the state total which is the important total), and as long as Kerry wins that county or area, no one will really question the results.

Similarly, in a Bush stronghold, no one will question if Kerry's numbers are even weaker than expected.

I think these FL panhandle counties are RIPE for a recount, absolutely, positively.

[sherilocks]

16. When the newspapers did their recounts

which, by the way, showed that Gore won Florida, there did not seem to be a problem in the rural counties in 2000.

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. Alachua County is a Democratic Stronghold

Yet we are showing the same pattern has the so called Dixicrat Counties. There is no way this is possible. The Kerry campaign and supporters were well organized, motivated and they did get the vote out. The Bush Campaign was no where to be seen, except maybe in the churches.

There is no way Bush got out his base in Alachua County because there is no base in Alachua County, especially after the Gainesville SBV Rally disaster. Something stinks here.


edit: If you look at our local races a couple of REP did win re-election. The Sheriff and the State Attorney. Both have done a good job and were running against opponents who wouldn't have been any better. So yes, REPS can win here, but only if they are Moderate REPS.

[rainy]

21. 2000 is when this s**t all started, how can we be sure those

democrats votes weren't stolen back in 2000? I wonder what kind of machines were used then and I would like to know their voting habits before 2000.

[spotbird]

2. Yes but they are idiots so they don't care about the primaries. nt

[Vincardog]

3. The story is that there were no republican candidates running

so they registered as Democrats to vote in the weakest democratic candidate.

[floridadem30]

9. Actually in southwest florida there were several uncontested republicans

[TR Fan]

5. Yes, Democrats who vote Republican

Yes, these people have been registered as Democrats since time immemorial. I grew up in the area, "southern Georgia" as we used to call it. My parents were both registered as Democrats but voted for Repulican in every election from 1952 onwards!! If you check the historical trends in the 2000, 1996, 1992, but especially 1988 elections, you will find that the registration/voting patterns are similar. 1988 is the best comparison because in the other years we were running candidates from the South.

I feel that there were substantial problems with this election, but this was not one of them and pursuing it past some logical point of certainty hurts us more than it helps.

[newyawker99]

7. Hi TR Fan!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[TR Fan]

14. Thanks fellow New Yorker; Good to be here n/t

[floridadem30]

8. In florida we must declare our party, however I live in the south west

I live in charlotte county where Mr. Fisher(D) is saying there is fraud and he has proof. I think our absentee ballots need to be looked at closely because no one in my county was spared damage to their roofs and many of the people throughout our state were displaced due to the many hurricanes we just faced,

[Dookus]

10. yes

many Florida dems vote Republican.

But my question is about all the NEW registrations - were NEW voters registering Dem just so they could vote for Bush? That doesn't make sense.

[floridadem30]

11. Actually there are discrepancies in the new registrations as well

[dbonds]

13. True

In Florida you have to be registered in a party to vote in the primaries. BUT (a big but) they are so far along in the national primaries they don't have much say. Voting the weaker candidate only has meaning for state primaries. I just moved from Orlando, not exactly around those counties. But the panhandle is a not really an area where people go to retire. It is a mixture of people that have just moved in, people from the military, some old timers that used to be hell raisers in their day, and some people that have had their families there all their life.
Remember how close this area is to Panama City where they film the Girls Gone Wild videos, or to Gulf Breeze with all the Alien sightings. This is spring break country. I really don't buy the dixi-crat theory. Yes they 'may' have voted that way in 2000, and they did tend to vote that way in 96 (by a far less margin), but the exit polls still don't match this time. I would not rely on 2000 for valid data in Florida.

[sherilocks]

18. Do you actually know of any rural counties

that had exit polls? This is an honest question, not an argument. I would like to see the results for myself. I did an exit poll in the primaries, but my county is not considered a rural, Dixiecrat county.

[dbonds]

28. I don't think they released the raw data for exit polls

With out that we can't know exactly where they are. But since there was a statistical anomaly in those counties in 2000 too, it looks like they would be there for data points (whether they weighted them in or not)

[sherilocks]

15. Locals races-still run as Democrats

You have to be registered in a party to vote in their primary, unless there is no one running in your own party.

Dixiecrats still run as Dems in local races.

Sorry Randi, you are wrong on this one. There's plenty more out there as far as Florida goes, but not in the rural counties,

BTW: Volusia voted for Gore and for Kerry. The mistakes were corrected.

[rjbny62]

20. NY Times covering the dixiecrat issue

here is an article from today

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?oref=login

plus this graphical representation of the vote. It seems clear that the voting patterns show that this isn't a new thing.

http://nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/11/11/politics/20041112_THEO_GRAPH.html

[kerry-is-my-prez]

29. Posted this before but I spoke to the head of the Dem Party in Baker.

She told me that most of the people were very religious (Pentecostal and strict Baptist) and that they usually vote for Reps in the national races and Dems in the more local races. She said: "I can't figure out why they voted for Mel Martinez (the Senator) though.

She said that they voted for Carter and Clinton in larger numbers becasue they saw them as "church-going" people. (And the fact that they were both Southern was a big factor also, I'm sure)

[kerry-is-my-prez]

30. They still call people "Yankees" down there. They hate east coasters.

They will never ever vote for someone from the east coast. For some reason, they don't think of people from the midwest as complete "Yankees" however.

[demodonkey]

32. How did the "Dixiecrats" vote prior to the (suspicious) 2000 election? nt

[imenja]

34. Dixiecrats

I initially found it very odd that so many Democrats in
Northern counties voted for Bush.  Actually, I was surprised
that the majority of registrations in N Florida were Democrat
at all, because the N is much more conservative than the
South.  The Democratic party's stronghold in Fla is in the
three southern counties:  Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and most
importantly Broward.
   I checked the 2000 election results and those counties went
for Bush then too.  I personally have not checked any earlier
elections, but I read in a newspaper (sorry can't remember
which) that a number of political scientists have observed
that the voting patterns in N Florida is Republican, even
though they are still registered Dem.  As I said in my
previous posting,  a professional historian of Florida and
Kerry supporter confirmed this to me.  The thing to do if you
suspect these numbers are false, is to check previous
elections and see if the voting patterns hold.  
  Remember that the entire South was solid Democrat before the
1964 Civil Rights act.  The Democrats were the party of
slaveholders at the time of the Civil War.   Lyndon Johnson,
in appropriately and courageously backing Civil Rights
legislation in the mid 1960s, prompted Southern Dems to begin
to vote for Republicans at the national level.  Many people
changed registrations during the Reagan era, but evidently a
number in north Florida did not.  African Americans living in
North Florida continue to vote Democratic in national
elections.  I do not know what their share of the population
is.  

Again, I suggest examining prior election results if you are
suspicious of the north Florida numbers.   God knows the
Republicans run the state and have taken all kinds of measures
to ensure a Republican victory, including denying provisional
ballots in Palm Beach county (and likely others), but I think
those northern Floridians really did vote for Bush.  It fits
with what I know about that area.