In the following essay, you are asked to evaluate Florida as a battleground state. You must use class material in developing and supporting your arguments. As directed, you must use other outside sources. In addition, you may use additional outside sources.
Be absolutely sure to cite all sources. You may use any citation style you are comfortable with. That said, to be certain you correctly and clearly cite source material, I recommend that you use footnotes. Repeated footnote cites to the same source may be cited using “ibid” (if you don’t know what that means, look it up!).
The paper should be 12-15 pages long, double-spaced, with 12 point Times New Roman font. Unlike prior assignments, write this as an essay and be sure to cover all questions, below. You should use section headers to organize your paper.
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The 2024 General Presidential Election has started with the nomination of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as their parties’ nominees. Joe Biden has made initial media buys in Florida, indicating that his campaign will contest the state.
(20 points) What is the history of Florida as a battleground state over the last sixty years? Please place Florida in context of election patterns across the South during the same period. In answering this question, please consult election results available online, such as David Leip’s Election Atlas (Note: you do not need to buy data as the state level data are free and he uses inverse blue and red colors to identify Republicans and Democrats). Given this information, would you consider Florida to be a battleground state?
(20 points) A recent St. Pete Polls survey finds Trump leading Biden by six percentage points. Analyze this margin of support between the two candidates. Given the margin of error of 2.2%, how confident are you Trump leads Biden in Florida? Is there anything surprising in the support among demographic groups in this poll?
(40 points) Imagine you are a prospective campaign manager for the Trump and Biden Florida campaigns. In your job interview, you are asked what your campaign strategy to deliver Florida for your candidate. Drawing from what you learned in class, what recommendations do you make for Trump? What recommendations do you make for Biden?
(20 points for style and grammar.)
This is the hyperlink was attached to David Leip’s Election Atlas
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/
This was the hyperlink attached to St. Pete Polls survey
Trump leads Biden by some 6 points in new FL survey, but among independents the race is a tie
