Fla. Republican voter advantage biggest in decades
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – With another presidential election year taking shape, Florida’s reputation as the nation’s biggest battleground state has faded: Republicans now hold the biggest advantage in voter registration either major party has held in almost four decades.
State elections data through February shows the GOP has just surpassed a major milestone. The party’s 851,417voter lead marks the biggest gap between the parties in Florida since Democrats dominated by more than 854,000 votes in 1988.
The gulf could make Florida an afterthought in this year’s presidential contest. Instead, more competitive states are where the contenders in coming months will likely steer their TV advertising, campaign staff and barnstorming visits, both sides said.
Florida’s Division of Elections shows the state has 5.2 million Republicans, almost 4.4 million Democrats and close to 3.9 million no party-affiliated voters.
Democrats say the divide between the parties is misleading, swelled by the shifting of almost 1 million voters last year from active to inactive status, under a new state law that threatens the eligibility of those who fail to cast a ballot during the previous two general elections.
Low turnout among Democrats in the 2022 governor’s race, won by Gov. Ron DeSantis by a stunning 19%, has led to a disproportionate number of registered Democrats going to inactive status, analysts said. But the distance between the parties is striking given that Republicans only edged out registered Democrats for the first time in the state’s modern history at the end of 2021. Since then, the state has turned only redder.
Florida politics have changed significantly since the 2000 election, when the state’s politically purple hue was firmly cast with the 537-vote margin by which Republican George W. Bush carried the state and won the White House. Bush won again four years later before the pendulum swung and Democrat Barack Obama twice carried Florida. After Trump took the state in 2016 and carried it by an even bigger margin in 2020, DeSantis’ reelection victory two years ago was by the largest spread in a Florida governor’s race in 40 years.
But Democrats say just looking at the widening gap between registered voters fails to account for the wild card of noparty-affiliated Floridians who comprise 26% of the state’s electorate. “While our numbers on the surface don’t look as pretty as someone who is chair of the party would like to see, there are reasons and Democrats know that we can never win an election with just Democrats,” said Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried.
“We always have to make sure our message transcends partisan politics,” she added, pointing out that the Biden White House remains focused on Florida.
The state’s property insurance woes (with Floridians paying the highest homeowners’ costs in the nation), a lack of affordable housing, and the state’s strict new abortion law are among the issues Democrats will run on this fall, Fried said.
“We will be talking to independents and moderate Republicans who believe this new MAGA Republican Party is not reflective of their values,” Fried said. “We’ve had 30 years of one-party rule in this state. But we have an opportunity to transform the electorate by staying on the message of what Floridians are really talking about.”