AP Analysis: Fla. Dems gain from Hispanic growth

OCALA, Fla. (AP) - When Hector Gonzalez moved from New Jersey to central Florida last month, his fiancee’s mother nagged him to register to vote when he got his new driver’s license. The 20-year-old Puerto Rican native followed his future mother-in-law’s advice, and Florida Democrats added another voter to their rolls.

With the aid of Florida’s growing Hispanic population, Democrats almost doubled their lead in statewide registrations since the last presidential election. An Associated Press analysis of voter registration and U.S. Census data of the state’s 67 counties showed that as a county’s Hispanic population grew, so did the number of Democrats.

The review also showed that the GOP gained voters when the number of whites increased in a county, but Republicans’ numbers went down if the number of young adults, blacks and Hispanics grew.

Today, 1 in 5 Floridians is Hispanic, compared to 1 in 8 Floridians in 1990.

The changes give Barack Obama an edge against John McCain in his bid to become just the third Democratic presidential candidate in three decades to win Florida — Jimmy Carter won in 1976, and Bill Clinton took the state 20 years later — and its 27 electoral votes.

In the past, Florida’s Hispanic population was dominated by Miami’s large anti-Castro Cuban community, which supported Republican candidates because of the GOP’s strong rhetoric against the Cuban leader. But the influx in the past decade of Hispanics from Puerto Rico, Mexico and other places has diminished the Republican leanings of the state’s 3.7 million Hispanics. Today, fewer than 3 out of 10 Hispanics in Florida are Cuban, compared with more than 4 out of 10 in 1990.

Demographic changes in the past 50 years have helped shape the current political landscape in Florida. Liberal transplants from the Northeast helped pull the traditionally conservative Democratic Party to the left. At the same time, Midwestern transplants helped shape the state’s Republican Party into a force that has dominated Florida politics for the past decade.

But this year, Democrats have chipped away registered voters in traditionally Republican areas like central Florida’s Marion County, which includes Ocala. In 2004, there were 6,404 more Republicans than Democrats. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats by only 4,000 registered voters. Not coincidentally, the county’s Hispanic population grew by almost 40 percent to more than 30,000 residents during the last four years.

“You just get a sense that the electorate is shifting,“ said Bruce Seaman, chairman of the Marion County Democratic Party. “A significant portion of the electorate is moving from a conservative viewpoint to one that is going to give Democrats a chance.“

Statewide, there are 658,000 more Democrats than Republicans today, compared with a margin of 369,000 in 2004. As a caveat, registered Democrats in the Panhandle often vote Republican at the presidential level.

Erin VanSickle, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida, said it was a difficult environment for her party nationwide.

“For a political party to grow and be successful, it must appeal to a diverse group of people while maintaining the ideals on which it was founded,“ she said. “We will continue to look for ways to spread our message to voters.“

Since the 2004 presidential election:

— For every four new Hispanic residents in a Florida county, there was a three-person growth in Democratic registration.

— For every three new Hispanic residents in a county, there was a one-person decline in registered Republicans.

— For every new black resident in a county, there was a decline of one registered Republican.

— For every three new young adults, between ages 20 and 40, in a county, there was a two-person decline in registered Republicans.

According to the latest voter registration numbers, Flagler County, just north of Daytona Beach, switched from a GOP lead of 1,239 registered voters in 2004 to a Democratic lead of 684 registered voters this year. Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, went from a Republican lead of 8,108 registered voters in 2004 to Democratic lead of 11,705 registered voters in 2008.

Tony DiMatteo, chairman of the GOP in Pinellas County, credited the shift to younger, more urban voters moving to the county from northern states while older, Republican-leaning voters have been “quite frankly, dying off.“

The county “used to have the nickname of ‘God’s Waiting Room,‘“ DiMatteo said. “They have been replaced by people who are a lot younger, professionals ... They tend to be more Democratic. It has been a population shift that we really have had no control over.“

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.