• This is the first time both major parties have fielded candidates appealing largely to their most hard core partisans, rather than the swing-voter centrists who campaigns have forever obsessed over along the Interstate-4 Corridor. The governor’s race is a base war, not a race to the middle.

• Never before have Floridians nominated an African-American candidate for governor, making race a significant and overt part of the campaign.

• We have an utterly unpredictable, and energized electorate where no one can say with confidence who will turn out in big numbers and who won’t. And in a state known as Heaven’s Waiting Room, a majority of the electorate today is younger than 54, making it even more unpredictable.

• Partisan divisions are so fixed that money and TV ads appear much less important as they once were.