Which county was Mitt Romney’s biggest in Florida?

You might be tempted to say reliably Republican Okaloosa County, home to the Eglin Air Force Base and Fort Walton Beach. Romney’s margin over President Obama was the largest Okaloosa, beating the president by almost 47,000 votes there. That amounted to a 75 percent win for Romney in Okaloosa.

But Romney garnered the most votes in the deep-blue county of Miami-Dade, which gave him an overall total of 331,000 votes compared to 70,000 from Okaloosa. Miami-Dade accounted for 8 percent of Romney’s total Florida vote, compared to just under 2 percent for Okaloosa.

Of course, all of this makes sense — Miami-Dade is the largest county in Florida, so it’s naturally going to have the largest amount of voters on both sides. Obama still trounced Romney in Miami-Dade, with almost 540,000 votes. That meant Obama beat Romney in Miami-Dade, 59 percent to 41 percent.

The Economic Time Machine offers this look at voting totals as a lesson in market share (Obama’s edge over Romney in Miami-Dade) versus raw numbers (the amount of votes Romney won in Miami-Dade).

Romney’s large tally in Broward and Miami-Dade, two reliably Democratic counties, helps explain why South Florida is such a target for marketers around the country. We just have tons of consumers, and that’s going to mean fertile ground whether you’re selling BMWs, concert tickets, or Republican policies.

The Miami Herald’s Economic Time Machine tracks 60 local indicators in an effort to chart South Florida’s recovery from the Great Recession. By comparing current conditions to where they were before the downturn, the ETM attempts to measure how far back the recession set the economy. The answer so far: June 2003. Visit ETM headquarters at miamiherald.com/economic-time-machine for the latest updates.