Showing how "chaos candidate" Donald Trump scored critical victories in Florida in an election cycle that defied conventional political wisdom, this volume offers surprising insights into the 2016 Republican primary and presidential election. Using historical and current election results, campaign spending numbers, United States Census data, and individual surveys, contributors find that Trump won rural and suburban voters that the Clinton campaign had ignored. They discover that early voting was less decisive than has been assumed; that the immigration issue may not have been as important to Hispanic voters as analysts believed; and that African American voter turnout was down significantly from 2012 despite the racially divisive nature of Trump's campaign. Essays also include a breakdown of how the unpredictable voting patterns in Central Florida's I-4 Corridor often determine which candidate takes the state. Florida's clout should not be dismissed. The state awards more electoral votes than most, and its victor has gone on to claim the presidency in the last six elections. This volume forecasts the future of the most politically volatile state in the union and reveals emerging trends in the national political landscape.

Against the backdrop of the Tea Party-dominated GOP, former Florida governor Jeb Bush may appear comparatively moderate, but his record tells a different story. In Conservative Hurricane, Matthew Corrigan probes beyond the mild veneer, the sound bites, and the photo ops to examine the real evidence of Bush's political leanings- his policies, politics, and legacy as the state's most powerful governor. After remaking himself from a strident ideologue into a restrained conservative policy wonk, Bush became Florida's first two-term Republican governor. The small-government conservative-who in his second inaugural address dreamed of an idyllic Tallahassee free of government employees-was unstoppable. He presided over the largest accumulation of executive branch authority in the state's history and advanced a multitude of social and economic reforms, the effects of which are still felt in the Sunshine State today. It was the beginning of a new kind of conservative activism, one that has only gained strength in the years since Bush left office. From the culture wars to the management of state government, Corrigan examines the governor's indelible mark on Florida. He demonstrates how the issues most closely associated with Bush's leadership, including education reform, end-of-life decisions, and gun rights, would guide Republican governors in other states as they rode the rising tide of conservative populism. For anyone curious about a potential Jeb Bush presidency, this book is required reading.