Broward shift a warning for Democrats
Even in heavily blue county, DeSantis’ results gave GOP reason to cheer
Looking at a map of Florida election results, Broward County looks like a blue oasis for Democrats in the Republican red state of Florida.
But a closer look at the 2022 midterm elections shows it’s somewhat of a mirage — and an ominous sign for any Democrat who thinks their party has a shot at winning statewide elections in the foreseeable future.
Broward is one of only five Florida counties, out of 67, won by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist. Gov. Ron DeSantis won the rest, as he racked up an impressive 59.4% of the statewide vote.
“It’s finally baby blue,” said state Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point, who’s been working on behalf of candidates — and winning his own elections to the County Commission and state Legislature — as a Republican in the overwhelmingly Democratic county for decades, including three-plus years as county Republican Party chairman.
State Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Palm Beach County Democrat whose district used to include part of Broward, said the results in the county show her party has major challenges.
“We are, as a party, doing something terribly wrong when Broward County votes at 40-something percent. It’s supposed to be the bluest county in the state, and we can’t even get the Democrats out to vote,” she said.
Republican gains
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Crist won Broward by about 15 percentage points. Statewide, Gov. Ron DeSantis finished 19 points ahead of Crist. But the countywide win-loss columns don’t tell the full story.
That Broward results are a big victory for DeSantis and Republicans.
Just two years ago, Democratic Joe Biden finished 30 points ahead of then-President Donald Trump in Broward. Four years before that, the Democratic advantage was even greater, with Hillary Clinton 35 points ahead of Trump.
Turnout always falls in midterm elections between presidential contests. But Democratic performance was abysmal.
Despite Crist winning and DeSantis losing countywide, DeSantis did better than he did in 2018. And Crist did much worse than that year’s Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Gillum.
Crist received about 343,000 votes in Broward — about 139,000 fewer votes, or 29% less than Gillum received four years ago. The slide in Broward was worse than the 23% decline in the number of votes statewide that went to the Democratic candidates in 2022 and 2018.
DeSantis received 251,000 Broward votes — about 29,000 more than in 2018. The increase in the number of votes in Broward was about 13.2% from his 2018 showing, slightly higher than the 13.1% increase in the number of votes he received statewide.
A map showing results for each precinct in Broward, prepared by Florida-based data analyst Matthew Isbell, shows DeSantis did especially well in areas in west-central Broward and in the northeast, along the coast. He also won along the northern tier of Broward, all along the border of Palm Beach County.
DeSantis won Palm Beach County as well.
Crist’s strongest support was in central Broward and an inland stretch of northeast Broward.
The Republican governor did especially well in communities with older, more white residents, and Crist did better in areas with more Black residents, according to the analysis by Isbell, who grew up in Broward.
And, Isbell wrote in a
Twitter post, compared to the 2020 presidential election, “DeSantis notably flipped precincts around Pembroke Pines, Davie, Parkland, Deerfield, and Hallandale — expanding well outside the GOP islands of the rich coast and rural Southwest Ranches.”
He doesn’t expect Broward to turn red. But, he wrote, “Dems have no statewide shot with only +15 in Broward.”
Democratic advantages
There are some pluses for Democrats:
They have an overwhelming majority of the registered voters, and Republicans are in third place, behind no party affiliation/independents.
Their gubernatorial nominee, Crist, won the county with 57% of the vote, even as he was trounced statewide by Republican DeSantis. So did Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Val Demings, who was also soundly defeated statewide.
Democrats control all nine County Commission districts, all four congressional districts that take in all or part of the county, and 14 of the county’s 15 state senators and representatives are Democrats, all the countywide elected officials are Democrats.
More Republican gains
Other positive data points for Republicans:
LaMarca easily defeated his challenger, Democrat Linda Thompson-Gonzalez, in a northeast Broward district that has often served as bellwether territory for the national mood.
The district has about the same number of registered Democrats and Republicans, and a large share of no party affiliation/independent voters, and Democrats thought it was a place they might have a chance to pick off an incumbent Republican.
Instead, LaMarca cruised to reelection with 57% of the vote.
Though U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, the longest-serving Democratic member of Congress in the state, won a strong reelection, with 55% of the vote, it’s a lower percentage of the vote than she’s ever received before. She’s averaged 63% in her previous elections in Broward, though the district has been significantly reconfigured this year as part of the once-a-decade redistricting to adjust for population changes uncovered in the 2020 Census. She now represents all of Broward; previously her district took in parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
School Board memberelect Brenda Fam, a Republican, defeated a Democrat in a district that takes in much of the southern part of Broward from Florida’s Turnpike west to the Everglades.
The races are officially nonpartisan, but the Republican Party pushed Fam’s candidacy, which was included on the county “Republican Party Voter Guide.”
Broward still turns out large numbers for the Democrats, and the party needed them.
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Parkland, was elected to the reconfigured district left behind by former U.S Rep. Ted Deutch, who resigned to become CEO of the American Jewish Committee.
Moskowitz lost the Palm Beach County part of the district, and won the election with a strong showing in Broward.
Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky also lost the Palm Beach County part of
her cross-county district, and likewise was returned to another term in Tallahassee because of a strong performance in the northern Broward portion of her district.
Neighboring counties
Republicans also improved their performance in the other two big South Florida counties, MiamiDade and Palm Beach.
The two counties went Republican, a major change in both places.
The flip in Miami-Dade County had been widely expected, but the Palm Beach County results — though by a narrow margin — were something Republicans hoped for. Democratic turnout was “miserable,” said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University.
Factors
Wagner said there aren’t just one or two simple reasons for what happened.
“Often when we see a result, there is a tendency to try to backfill an explanation,” he said. “There are a lot of variables in a state the size of Florida, and we should all take a breath. When a major party in Florida loses by 20 points, there’s a lot more going on than one thing.”
The lack of interest by Democratic voters in the 2022 election was a central factor.
Republicans were enthusiastic, motivated by their support for DeSantis. Several Democrats said their voters weren’t enthusiastic, especially as polls throughout the summer and fall showed Crist and Demings headed to defeat.
It was one of the few times in the last two decades that the outcome of major statewide contests — for president, governor or U.S. Senate — were obvious long before Election Day.
In contrast to Republicans, who have been engaging in years of robust efforts to court voters — registering them to vote and staying in touch to get them to actually turn out and vote — Democratic efforts have been anemic.
And with recent statewide election losses, and no good prospects for victory, national donors who could have helped finance voter registration and turnout efforts in Florida put their resources elsewhere, spending in places where Democrats had more of a chance. Their political calculation was proven correct. Unlike Florida, there was no nationwide Republican wave, and Democrats performed much better than many analysts had expected.
“Republicans were much more excited about Governor
DeSantis than Democrats were about former Governor Crist, and you can see that in the miserable Democratic turnout,” Wagner said. Crist, a Democratic congressman from 2017 until this summer, was the state’s Republican governor from 2007 to 2011.
Polling has an impact on people. “Perceptions of whether or not your side is going to win or not really does have an effect on turnout,” Wagner said. People are motivated to be with a winner, he said, and if a loss looks likely voters aren’t motivated.
Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller, a moderate Democrat and longtime close political associate of Crist, said Democrats are continuing to suffer in areas with many Hispanic voters because the Republicans have successfully — and wrongly, in Geller’s view — been able to portray his party as socialist, often by highlighting ideas emanating from the progressive left and representing them the views of the entire party.
Looking forward
LaMarca said he thinks the Republican improvement was enhanced by people moving from other states. Retirees from the northeast filled condominium communities in Broward for decades, but that trend has shifted. “The folks moving here are not disaffected blue voters, they are fed-up red voters who left New York.”
Kartik Krishnaiyer, publisher of the left-leaning political website The Florida Squeeze, sees trouble ahead for Broward Democrats.
“Broward County is very much now in the GOP’s sights,” Krishnaiyer wrote. “We’re seeing bleed in the county not only among Latinos, but among Haitian Americans and Jamaican Americans also. I would expect Broward to trend further toward the GOP in future cycles at this rate.”