Free Republic

In the final week of this 'dead heat' presidential election, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's landslide 1980 victory. Then as now, President Jimmy Carter was polling neck-and-neck with his Republican challenger. A Gallup poll showed Carter up one percentage point nationally in late October. Only four days before the vote, a CBS News/New York Times survey showed the race to be just as close.

Of all the 15 Florida counties under mandatory state evacuation orders, 14 are dominantly, if not overwhelmingly, Republican. The total number of registered Republican voters in those 15 counties is slightly over two million, while the number of registered Democrats in those same counties is about 1.2 million. Approximately 800,000 more registered Republicans than registered Democrats in the state of Florida are being told to get out of their homes. And that may have an enormous impact. In the 2020 election, there was a huge 77 percent turnout rate in Florida – meaning nearly one out of every eight eligible...