Gestión del Alcance

My second hypothesis is that election returns in Florida are increasingly party-oriented. In other words, voters rely on the party affiliation of the candidate to make the vote choice, rather than the candidate’s platform or campaign efforts. Such partisanship does not mean policy positions or campaigns do not matter; in any individual election, they will surely play a part, and sometimes, they will be decisive, as any casual observer of presidential elections, can attest. My hypothesis is, rather, that party is an increasingly important driver of voting behavior and election results.

In this section, I offer evidence against which to test the hypothesis that voters are increasingly voting along party lines. Given the hypothesis that partisanship is more important than before, and more important than other factors, then, one reasonable prediction is that, across many election cycles, in elections for different offices, we should see election results converging over time.

We can test this prediction against evidence visually by plotting election results across time for different elections, creating different “series”. Within the axes, we can trace the results for different elections using different lines, creating multiple line

graphs. As before, a positive number indicates a Republican winning vote margin, whereas a negative number indicates a Democratic winning vote margin.

The following multiple line graphs in Figure 8 below illustrate the voting trends for five large counties: Broward, Hillsborough, Orange, Duval, and Brevard Counties, representing the Southeast, Central West, Central, Northeast, and Central East regions of Florida respectively. Each graph plots the data series for each of six offices: U.S.

President, U.S. Congress, U.S. Senator, Governor, State Attorney General, and Commissioner of Agriculture. Time in years is plotted on the x-axis, and the winning margin along the y-axis. The broken line for is for missing data.

Figure 8 Graph of Winning Margins in Elections for State and U.S. Federal Government Offices, Between 1980 and 2006, for Five Large Florida Counties

Source: Author Calculations, from Florida Division of Elections Data

The charts in Figure 8 display three clear patterns. First, the lines in tandem reflect the characteristic partisan evolution of the counties: a slow upward drift of the election series for Duval and Brevard Counties, and to some extent Hillsborough County, indicating increasing Republican partisanship, a relatively flat graph for Orange County, indicating its competitive profile, and a marked decline in the election series for Broward County, consistent with increasing Democratic partisanship in that county.

Second, the volatility introduced by wave elections is also clearly visible, indicated by the sharp spikes up for the 1994 Republican wave, and the spike down for the 2006 Democratic wave. Third, the individualistic nature of the U.S. Senate is also visible, with even Republican counties such as Duval and Brevard providing comfortable victories for Democrat Bob Graham, visible in the downward spikes in the Senate series for 1992 and 1998.

For my purposes, however, the most important trend is the narrowing of the variation in the election result, with the lines converging as we move from left to right. In Brevard County, for example, there was approximately a 70% gap between

presidential and House voting in 1980; by 2004, this had narrowed to less than 20%.

In Broward County, a President-Congress voting gap of almost 30% had narrowed to less than 10%. The other election series show similar, if less dramatic, convergence.

In the last section, we found that the sections suggested by county-level voting for U.S. President and U.S. House of Representatives came into focus when aggregated into regional units. It follows that the different election series graphed in figure 7 should also illustrate the sectional nature of Florida when combined into regions. To simplify the analysis, and to highlight the outcome of interest, I will plot three election series, rather than six. But which elections should I compare?

If party is the cue for the vote choice, rather than candidates, then the best comparison will be between a high-intensity election, one that is likely to capture the attention and interest of the electorate, with a low-intensity election, one that is least likely to generate voter interest. Of the six election series in the multiple line graphs, it is likely that the election least likely to be followed attentively by voters is for State Agriculture Commissioner.³⁵ As with the county level graphs, the prediction is that both the high and low intensity elections will converge.

Figure 9 displays time series charts for the winning margins for U.S. President, U.S.

Congress and State Agriculture Commission by region. As in the previous section, election years are along the x-axis, and winning vote margins along the y-axis, and gaps in the House data series indicate missing data.

35 The office of Secretary of State of Florida became an appointed position in 2002 following the 1998 reforms of the Florida Cabinet, so that data series is omitted from this study. The Chief Financial Officer of Florida is an elected position created by the same reforms, but since that data series only

Figure 9 Graphs of Winning Margins in Elections for U.S. President, U.S.

House, and Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Between 1980 and 2006, by Florida Region

Source: Author Calculations, from Florida Division of Elections

The graphs in Figure 9 show that in every region, the election series have converged - in some instances dramatically. Looking at the trend in the regions graphs over the twenty-five year time frame, we see that, from enormous divergence between presidential voting and voting for Congress and Agriculture Commissioner in the early 1980s, the series began to converge in the early 1990s, then widened over the course of the decade, perhaps reflecting divided government in Washington D.C.,

before converging again, more markedly, in the last decade. For some regions, such as Central, North Central and North West Florida, the time series for Congress and Agriculture Commissioner are almost coterminous in by 2006.

The region graphs illustrate the convergence in voting with more clarity than the county graphs. Overall, the graphs support the hypothesis that elections are increasingly driven by party identification on the part of voters.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I tested two hypotheses by comparing evidence against predictions implied by the hypotheses. First, the sectionalism hypotheses predicted that county election results form partisan sections. I tested this prediction with county level data, aggregated to region level, for elections for U.S. President and U.S. Congress

between 1980 and 2006, and found clearly distinguishable partisan sections within Florida.

Second, the partisanship hypothesis predicted that election results for different offices over time would converge, as party eclipsed candidate or campaign as the

determinant of voting. I tested this prediction with county level data, also aggregated to region level, for six different elections between 1980 and 2006, and found clear evidence of convergence of results for different elections.

According to my theory, the two hypotheses are related because sections will

contribute to party safe elections to the extent voters within a geographic section are partisans, meaning that they identify with either the Democratic or Republican or party, and take their cue regarding how to vote, in different elections, from that party identification.

My argument is that these sections explain party-safe elections, including elections for Congress. Institutional design, such as partisan redistricting, may play a part in party-safe Congressional elections, but it is not clear whether they make elections more or less competitive. It is likely that in some instances, as in Southwest Florida in the 1990s, gerrymandered districts complement sections. In other instances,

gerrymandered districts appear to offset sections, as in Southeast Florida more

recently. To make progress on this section-based, structural argument, I must provide an explanation of why these partisan sections exist. I turn to that task in chapter 6.

CHAPTER 6: