MSNBC's Joe Scarborough explained what to look for in Florida's early election reporting that could spell "bad news" for President Donald Trump.
Huge numbers of Florida voters have already cast their ballots with five days until the Nov. 3 election, and the "Morning Joe" host said that could allow results to be available relatively early on Election Night.
"The whole state of Florida doesn't report obviously until 8 o'clock, when the Central Time Zone of Florida, my part of the state, starts reporting, but I could tell by 8 o'clock, by comparing what Bush had done in [2000] with what he was doing in 2004 and these Florida -- in these Florida counties, whether it was in Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach, or whether it was the center of the state or up in Jacksonville and Duval County. I could tell that Bush was so overperforming his 2000 numbers and I turned to people on the panel, I said, 'Hey, Florida is not going to be close this year. Since there are so many transplants in this state, if Bush is outperforming himself here, this is going to also be true across the Midwest.'"
That's why Scarborough said he'll be watching the early results from Florida to get a sense of how other swing states might fall.
"We have all been hearing that, yes, Pennsylvania, it's going to take them 18 years to count all the votes in Pennsylvania," he said, "but it's important for people to remember that by 7:30, especially if 75 percent, 80 percent of Floridians have already voted, by 7:30 we can go in and look at a lot of the counties, especially in the middle of the state, and, like you said, along the Gulf Coast. If Donald Trump is underperforming by 10 percent, 15 percent [of] what he did four years ago in those Florida counties, that's not just bad news for him in Florida -- that's bad news for him across the country."
On the other hand, early results from Florida could signal bad news for Joe Biden.
"Now, if Donald Trump is doing as well in those, even those small counties, some of which will have 90 percent of their vote in and we'll get it by 7:30 at night on Election Night, if you take some of those counties in the center of the state, and Donald Trump is holding those margins, well, Joe Biden may be in for not just a long night, a very long few weeks."
