Exit Polls

Just getting back from Florida, I decided to take a look at some races and their makeup in the sunshine state...

In Florida's districts 16 and 22, there was a switch from a Republican incumbent to a Democrat.

In the Senate, Democrat incumbent Nelson easily remained in office with 60% of the vote. Here is the link to exit polls from CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006//pages/results/states/FL/S/01/epolls.0.html
Areas that the Republican candidate Harris did well in was with the Cuban population, folks making over $200,000 a year, and people who approve of the job President Bush is doing. Generally, the relation to approval of the President's job was very strong with voting Republican and conversely so with disapproval and voting Democratic. These numbers stuck out to me on many exit polls. And it seems to be true that with Florida, the farther south you get, the less like the south the political makeup is.

The race for Florida's governor was a tight one, but Republican Crist was able to hold on to it. Some points of interest from the CNN.com exit polls (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/FL/G/00/epolls.0.html) There was no gender gap between the two candidates amongst the women, but the republican candidate have a 14 pt. difference amongst men. There was no democrat advantage amongst the Latino population. There was a difference when you looked at Hispanic dissent with Cubans favoring republicans. Only 20% of the state's electorate say their ideology is liberal while 34% say they are conservative and 46% say they are moderate. Here, the regional differences didn't pan out as well for the democrats, only getting a majority in the Miami area and no where else.

Other notes of interest: our team went to a lecture with Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts and shook his hand, got a picture, and listened to him skirt around any topic of interest to me. My next post may be on how justices are supposed to be nonpartisan but are obviously not in some of their policies and opinions.