President Trump wraps Florida swing with ‘very secure’ early vote

President Donald Trump joined the legions of early voters in Florida Saturday, casting his ballot in person in West Palm Beach.

“It was a very secure vote. Much more secure than when you send in your ballot. Everything was perfect. Very strict,” Trump said.

The President, when asked for whom he voted, said to laughter “I voted for a guy named Trump.”

“I hear we’re doing very well in Florida and everywhere else,” Trump said.

However, Democrats have dominated both vote by mail and early voting in the state thus far, casting doubt on that claim.

The President, who spent Friday holding raucous, 2016-styled rallies in The Villages and in Pensacola, has drilled down on Florida, which clearly has come to represent an actual home base for a President effectively exiled from Manhattan.

The Friday afternoon rally in The Villages, yet another play to pivotal Central Florida, included the President musing about perhaps selling Mar-A-Lago and moving to the sprawling retirement community.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll sell Mar-a-Lago and move to The Villages. Not a bad idea,” he quipped.

The Pensacola rally Friday evening was similarly a homey affair, highlighted by yet another illustration of the unique bond between the President and the state’s “great Governor,” Ron DeSantis.

“Did he say a few words? We don’t want to hear from him again, do we,” Trump joked, continuing a repartee with DeSantis that has become a leit motif of these events.

Trump has joked that DeSantis would be “fired” if he lost Florida, and next month’s election results will reveal whether there’s anything to that. But for now, the President is betting his Florida homestead pays off at the ballot box.

Polling released in the last week shows the race as too close to call. A survey from the University of North Florida shows Biden +1 and a survey from St. Pete Polls has Biden +2.

If there are real worries for the President, it’s in drastic underperformance in battleground regions of the state that leaned to him in 2016 but aren’t buying in, according to surveys.

Several St. Pete Polls surveys released Monday tell the tale.

For example, Trump is down 11 points in Florida House District 60 in Tampa, a district he carried in 2016 by less than one point.

In House District 69 in Pinellas County Trump is down nearly 15 points. He won that district four years ago by three points.

A poll earlier this month also showed Trump down more than 13 points in Pinellas County as a whole, which he won four years ago by just more than 1%.