Florida, the United States’ incredibly flat protrusion into the sub-tropics, is an enormous and rapidly changing state, perhaps about to overtake New York as the third most populous state in the Union, and by far the biggest of the battleground states with 29 Electoral Votes in play.
Florida entered political legend when the 2000 Presidential contest in the state came down to just a few hundred votes out of more than 5.8 million cast. Weeks of scrutinising disputed ballots and bitter court battles ended with George W Bush winning the state, and with it the Presidency, by just 537 votes after an acrimonious US Supreme Court decision. The world watched in horrified fascination as the nation that has always claimed to be planet’s foremost democracy descended into national crisis over malfunctioning voting machines, butterfly ballots and the notorious hanging chads.
Florida is familiar to many foreigners, of course, as a holiday destination and mainstay of popular culture from Miami Vice to Ricky Martin to CSI: Miami, and has even earned that ultimate indication of pop culture aristocracy, its own Grand Theft Auto game.