Foreclosures Cause of McCain’s Failure in Florida

It is clear that foreclosures are the main cause of McCain’s failure in Florida.

One of the many who voted against him is Alicia Smith. She left her job about two years ago so as to have a baby. But now she cannot get another job. Her hope is that Obama will generate more employment. Smith said, “I’ve tried to find work but it’s hard out there.”

The unemployment rate in Florida is the highest since the last fourteen years. With foreclosures fanning the flame of economic blues the voters are mainly thinking about their pocket. According to an analysis conducted by Associated Press, Obama’s victory was largely due to the cloudy economic mood. McCain and the Republican Party were blamed for it. A correlation showed that for each 1% of foreclosed houses McCain lost 16% points.

Obama sailed through Florida with 50.9% of the votes. Since Bill Clinton (1996) this is the first Democrat candidate to win from Florida. Ever since 1964 during eleven elections this is the third time that a Democrat was won. David Denslow of University of Florida commented that the greater number of foreclosures in a county the more likely was it that votes would favour Obama. Of the six counties with the highest number of foreclosures in Florida, Obama won four. Republicans had won two of these – Tampa and Osceola, in 20004. Osceola County had the highest number of foreclosures among the counties with a rate of 1:69. The foreclosure percentage was 1.4.

Unemployment rates had a weaker correlation with the results of the election. For every 1% of the unemployed working force McCain gave ground by 1.8% to his rival.

This poses the question that although there has been a strong connection with foreclosures and election results why is it not so with unemployment? Stan Geberer of Fishkind & Associates of Orlando said, “I suspect that foreclosures might be a surrogate for some other kind of conditions, like really bad consumer confidence. Foreclosures may have more associative properties of whatever else is going on in the economy and may be a better surrogate than unemployment.”

Of all the economic variables, foreclosures have increased much more sharply since the last elections of 2004 when Bush defeated Democrat Kerry with 52% of the votes in the state. In September there were nearly 48,000 reo homes in September 2008 as compared to 10,350 in January 2005.

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