Florida was once dismissed as peripheral—a greying, golfing appendage to continental America. But the Sunshine State is now the country’s top migration destination and the 15th-largest economy in the world. How is this remarkable boom transforming the politics of a crucial swing state? And what lessons does Florida’s low-tax, low-spend model hold for the rest of America?

John Prideaux hosts with Jon Fasman and Alexandra Suich Bass, who has been driving the length and breadth of the state to talk to Florida natives and new arrivals alike. We go back to the 1970s to find out how the Democrats lost touch with so many Florida voters. And we hear from Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of Miami, about whether his city’s success is a model—or an exception.

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Archive material courtesy of Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Archives

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