No, Florida's special House election won’t predict November’s midterms

Whoever wins will call this a sign of things to come, of course, and there's little question the race does hinge heavily on the Affordable Care Act. Democrat Alex Sink is backs fixing it, not repealing it, while Republican David Jolly is against it. Though it'll likely swing on only a few thousand votes - either will point to it as proof of the merits of their argument heading into the fall.

Every cycle there's invariably a special election or two that the political world looks at a potential bellwether for the fall, sometimes because the district is marginal (which the 13th is: President Obama carried it by a point) or fits some "swing" demographic profile (check: the 13th is mostly white and middle class). But sometimes that gets overblown because it's the only game in town (also, check.) But we need only go back to the spring of 2010, the last midterm cycle, Democrats won in a similarly contested and closely-watched special election contest in Pennsylvania, then went on to lose more than 60 seats and the House that fall.

In 2014, it's probably better to say that this is a high-pressure race for Democrats: their chances to win back the House in November look slim to begin with, and winning the Florida 13th seems critical just to keep those chances afloat.

Polls have it very close. And outside money has flooded in for advertising and those turnout operations.

That said, Democrats are hoping - in fact, banking on - a Hispanic vote (about 9 percent of the population) to put Sink over the top. To do that, they'll need a successful registration and turnout drive, both because this is a special election, and because county-wide the Hispanic registration rate is relatively lower than that of whites. In that regard, Democrats will rightly view this contest a first, live test of those turnout efforts for the 2014 cycle.

The core cities in this part of Pinellas County are a portion of St. Petersburg and Clearwater. The recent historical patterns show that overall, a Democratic candidate countywide hopes to get 60 percent or so in St. Petersburg while breaking even in Clearwater. Clearwater could be decisive here: the president did well, but it can and does vote marginally Republican too, and especially in a non-presidential year.

In the northern Clearwater suburb of Dunedin, Mitt Romney won 51 percent of the vote, despite possessing an electorate more than 90 percent white, it appears that this inner suburb behaved more like a northern middle-class area adjacent to a city in 2012.

Largo, lying just south of Clearwater, has a black and Hispanic population combining to 11 percent now, and the Hispanic portion seems to be growing. Mr. Obama narrowly carried Largo in 2012, fueled by younger voters entering Largo. Along with a strong turnout in the minority precincts, Mr. Obama was able to offset a sizable 65+ vote (30 percent), more inclined to vote Republican.

South of Largo, Pinellas Park and Seminole, are fairly closely divided areas. Pinellas Park contains the third largest concentration of Hispanic voters in the county. Other than St. Petersburg, it is the only town/city in the district where Obama performed better in 2012 than in 2008.

These maps show why the presidential votes give Democrats hope while past vote in Congressional races don't tell the whole tale for comparison, as Republican Bill Young won comfortably.

All of that said, this will be closely watched and dissected by the parties and politicos in D.C. (And if they do decide there are bellwethers in Florida this time of year, they might note the Washington Nationals are having a decent spring.)