Hillary Clinton has a slight edge over Donald Trump in Florida heading into Election Day but the race remains “crazy tight” and could go either way.
That was the assessment of Democratic operative Steve Schale in an interview with “Examining Politics,” a weekly podcast from the Washington Examiner.
Schale was President Obama’s top adviser in Florida in 2008 and 2012 and has been closely monitoring the progress of early and absentee voting in the Sunshine State.
Schale said there are positive signs in early voting for both the Clinton and Trump campaigns, but that the level of ethnic diversity of the electorate, as it is shaping up, could tip the scales in the Democratic nominee’s favor.
“The big thing, when I look at it from the perspective of somebody who’d like to see Sec. Clinton win, is every day that goes by, we’re seeing the electorate in Florida get more diverse,” Schale said. “Florida is almost surely going to be more diverse in 2016 than it was in 2012.”
Schale also said early indications are that Clinton was over-performing with college-educated white women and that a sizable chunk of voters supportive of both the former secretary of state and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio were likely to turn out.
Still, as Schale does every morning in a memo he prepares for the public on the latest early and absentee voting numbers, he cautioned that the race is close and that Trump could still win.
“What we’re seeing is an exceptionally close race. If you’re looking for good news on either side, you’re going to find it,” Schale said. “These polls that show the race 1 or 2 points, you know, I can’t argue with any of them — whether they show one or two for Clinton or one or two for Trump at this point.”
Also on this edition of “Examining Politics,” Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” morning show, discusses his news book: “Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates; The Forgotten War that Changed American History.
