Florida's four competitive House seats have different swing voters

Why these voters, and why now

The swing voters in Florida's four competitive House seats don't hold the same views or priorities from one seat to the next. Around Tampa Bay, in the 13th and 14th, the largest group leans left on housing and right on immigration. In the 22nd, the largest group leans left on education and right on healthcare. In the 25th, it leans left on crime and right on housing. The same three pairings exist in every seat, and what changes is which one leads, so the message that reaches the most swing voters in Pinellas County reaches far fewer in Broward County. Together the four seats hold 238,897 swing voters, and a campaign can buy the right pairing in each seat instead of guessing from the district.

PharosGraph looks at the issues each voter cares most about and where that voter stands on each of them, and a voter is in the Swing Voter audience when those positions point in opposite directions: right on one issue that matters to them, left on another. That makes them the voters either campaign can reach on the issue where the voter already agrees with it, which is why the pairing matters more than the count. No poll or district average finds these voters, because they live side by side with everyone else; scoring each voter does.

Early voting opened October 19 in the counties that hold most of the four seats' voters and opens statewide on October 24. All four races are rated close. Cook has the 14th and 22nd as Toss Up and the 13th and 25th as Lean seats, and Inside Elections has the 14th and 25th as Toss-up, the 13th as Lean and the 22nd as Tilt. The candidates are Anna Paulina Luna and Leela Gray in the 13th, Kathy Castor and Mike Beltran in the 14th, Pia Dandiya and Casey Askar in the 22nd, and Jared Moskowitz and Scott Singer in the 25th.

Separately from where any voter stands, PharosGraph ranks the issues in each race every week by how much weight they carry with that race's voters. On that ranking, housing is the second or third issue in all four seats, and has been for most weeks since each race was added. Immigration ranks sixth in all four, and healthcare, crime and education rank lower. That puts housing on one side of the largest pairing in three of the four seats, and the side flips: left around Tampa Bay, right in the 25th. Swing voters are also about twice as likely as their districts' voters as a whole to be in the top fifth nationally for focus on housing, in every one of the four seats.

Here is what the largest group of swing voters in each seat wants on the two issues that pull it apart.

• 13th and 14th. They want housing treated as an affordability problem, with tenants kept stable and far more homes built. On immigration, they want the border secured and the law enforced first, with legal immigration kept open to those who follow the rules.
• 22nd. They put strong neighborhood schools first, with teachers paid well, tutoring funded and parents' concerns taken seriously. On healthcare, they want lower costs through competition and choice, with people who have pre-existing conditions protected.
• 25th. They want violence prevention and mental-health response funded, and police held to a high standard while kept on serious crime. On housing, they favor property rights, more supply and less regulation under local control.

These voters are drawn from all three registrations, and no county can be split this way, but each voter can.

Age tracks the pairing. The group that leans left on housing is the youngest in every seat, with a mean age in the late 30s, and the group that leans right on housing is the oldest, in the mid to late 50s, with the schools and healthcare group in between. Swing voters as a whole are younger than their districts and a few points less likely to have voted in 2024.

In the 13th, the swing voters live almost entirely in Pinellas County, with the rest in Pasco County. The 14th sits inside Hillsborough County. The 22nd runs from Broward County and Palm Beach County west to Collier County and Hendry County, and the 25th's swing voters are spread across Broward County, Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County.

PharosGraph ranks these audiences weekly and refreshes them monthly, so a campaign activating now reaches this fall's voters and not a list built in the spring. The Swing Voter audience, the position bands on immigration, crime, education and healthcare, and the Persuade and GOTV audiences for all four races are available now through L2 DataMapping and in LiveRamp. Anyone buying across these four seats can pair the Swing Voter audience with a different issue audience in each one instead of running the same message in all four. PharosGraph scores every registered voter in the country on the same issues, so the same split can be drawn for any district or state. In Florida, voting is already under way, so campaigns and issue groups should reach these voters before early voting opens statewide on October 24.