Again, Florida is pivotal to outcome of election

MIAMI — Twenty-seven.

Any Floridian bewildered by the attention the two presidential candidates and their bevy of running mates, wives, children and allies continue to lavish on the Sunshine State need only to remember a number: 27.

Twenty-seven as in a full 10 percent of 270, the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Twenty-seven as in the single biggest chunk of said electoral votes still up in the air.

The three states with bigger electoral prizes — California, 55, Texas, 34, and New York, 31 — are safely in the columns of Democratic challenger John Kerry, Republican President Bush and Kerry, respectively.

Florida's heft compared to the other swing states — it has nearly 30 percent more electoral clout than the next largest state, Pennsylvania — has some observers and even campaign aides suggesting that the winner of Florida will almost certainly be the next president.

"If you look at the maps and the way this election is shaping up, as goes Florida, so goes the nation," said Brett Doster, head of the Bush campaign in the state.

Kerry's aides have a slightly different spin. Because Bush took Florida in 2000 — then, it had only 25 electoral votes, prior to the post-Census reapportionment — after 36 days of disputed recounts and lawsuits, Florida is a near "must-win" for Bush but only a "nice-to-win" for Kerry, they say.

"Hard," said Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, describing Bush's challenge to win re-election without Florida. "They could. But I don't see how they can win without Florida and Ohio . . . I feel real good about what we have going on here and feel real good about Ohio, but we're not taking anything for granted."

For decades, Republicans saw Florida as part of the "Solid South" that emerged when the party wooed white, Democratic segregationists angry with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson for their support of civil rights laws.

Between 1960 and 1992, Florida supported the Democratic nominee only twice: in Johnson's landslide victory of 1964, and in Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter's post-Watergate win in 1976.

Republicans assumed the shift was a permanent one, particularly after the party took control of both chambers of the legislature in 1996 and Jeb Bush won the governorship in 1998. President Bill Clinton's 6-percentage point victory in the state in 1996 was seen as an anomaly, more a function of the weakness of Republican Bob Dole's campaign than a reflection of the state's voting patterns.