Florida's swing voters shrug off Trump impeachment: 'I'm not driven by it'
In Florida’s renowned I-4 corridor, as everywhere else across the country, the all-consuming spectacle of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is playing out on every television station, on radio and online.
But in this place where millions of swing voters provide one of the nation’s most authentic barometers of any White House hopeful’s political standing, there is evidence that the impeachment proceedings are not resonating with the electorate in a way both sides might have hoped.
A Guardian study of a cross-section of central Florida voters – Democratic and Republican; retired and working; white, black and Hispanic; US-born and immigrant – revealed attitudes ranging mostly from indifference to moderate engagement. That matters here: the I-4 corridor is the “swing state within a swing state” and where the battle for Florida will be fought in 2020’s election.
Even among those residents who say they are following developments closely, many believe the outcome is a foregone conclusion, or that the partisan and rancorous nature of events in the US Senate will switch people off to the significance of the occasion.
“I’m following it to a certain extent, I’d say it’s important but I’m certainly not overwhelmed by it, I’m not driven by it,” said Mike Banks, 52, a property manager from Orlando, which sits in the middle of the corridor which tracks the 132-mile east-west interstate 4 from Daytona Beach to St Petersburg.
Banks, who says he is an independent voter, backed Trump in the 2016 election, but is undecided who to vote for in November. His choice, he insists, won’t be influenced by the impeachment trial.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/23/florida-swing-voters-trump-impeachment-trial
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