Florida Moving Faster From Battleground To Blue? Thanks, Donald.

Republicans once were able to count on California, Texas and Florida in presidential contests. Then it was only Texas and Florida. A Clinton win in the Sunshine State on Tuesday could confirm the start of an era where Democrats head into presidential contests able to count on three of the mega-states ― California, New York and Florida ― with Republicans having only Texas.

  There are 46 other states and the District of Columbia, of course, but the four big ones account for a total of 151 electoral votes ― more than a quarter of the total available.

 “It reduces the math to a tiny group, but it’s a useful group,” said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer with the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. “If Florida is gone, that only leaves Texas.”

And that means that an electoral map that already was starting to lean in favor of Democrats would tilt that way even more drastically. “It’s not a like a coin flip anymore. It’s like a weighted coin,” Teixeira said.

Clinton’s campaign, of course, is doing everything it can to make that a reality. For months, Democratic staff and volunteers have been registering tens of thousands of new Latino voters all over the state, but with a particular focus in the Central Florida counties, where migration from Puerto Rico has been most intense.

And on Sunday, the final day of early voting, the campaign is putting an exclamation point on that effort with a visit to Kissimmee by a Clinton surrogate who is nearly as popular with Latinos as he is with African Americans: Obama himself.