Rarest wife and I vacation down there several times a year. Ft. Myers is expanding very quickly, like much of Florida, and they have a lot of very high end communities, shopping, and access to beaches.
Lee county is Republican by voter registration, but a lot of that is around Ft. Myers proper. Ft. Myers itself is much like St. Petersburg where Democrats just flood into the gated communities and bring their crap politics. The rural parts of Lee (everything east of 75) is where the Republicans live. Don’t pay attention to median income numbers. They’re lagging indicators.
If you really want to see high end areas take a drive down to Naples. Better yet, go out on one of the tour boats to see Port Royal. It will make you feel poor.
You are right that there’s a big difference between Fort Myers proper and the surrounding county. We generally don’t venture north of Colonial too much. Its not really a safe area.
I guess its all relative but I don’t view the fort Myers area as being high end. Don’t get me wrong — its very nice and in fact one of the great things about it is that its NOT high end. The Fort Myers area is a comfortably pleasant place to live. We have friends there who can live anywhere they want but they prefer the laid back and unpretentious lifestyle of the area.
By the way several areas east of 75 are being rapidly built up. The area south of the RSW is exploding.