Trump v Clinton: Florida or bust (GIF & Video & Poll)

Living in Celebration, a small town of about 7,000 souls in central Florida, is like being back in the 1950s, says Anne Lucas, a 74-year-old resident. Some of her neighbours describe it as The Bubble.

This is how Celebration’s citizens like it. The town was confected two decades ago by the Walt Disney Company to be an idealised sliver of mid-20th century Americana — a carefully curated haven of wooden verandas, front porches and picket fences, with a filmset capacity to conjure up comforting impressions of small-town innocence.

Sitting in her neat front sitting room with her husband Gene, Ms Lucas has no doubt which of the two main presidential candidates has the better chance of restoring the social cohesion and family-friendly safety she cherishes in Celebration, whose logo is of a girl cycling under an oak tree.

“I think he’s going to win by a landslide: it will be a ‘come to Jesus’ moment in the polls,” she says of Donald Trump, the Republican candidate. The US is losing its identity amid globalisation, illegal immigration and moral degradation, argues Ms Lucas, a stern woman who is a semi-retired geriatric care manager. “Russia is a strong country. China is a strong country. Japan is a strong country. We are just mush,” she says.

Convincing older, well-educated white citizens like the Lucases to turn out in November will be critical to Mr Trump’s hopes of overcoming his weakness among Florida’s rapidly growing Hispanic population and clinching victory in the biggest swing state.  READ MORE

Florida Polls by ReaclClearPolitics

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