Peter Schorsch
Florida voters approved medical marijuana with 71 percent of the vote on Election Day, and a new report commissioned by Florida for Care shows just how widespread support for the measure was in every corner of the state.
According to the TLE Analytics report, Amendment 2 reached the 60 percent threshold in each of Florida’s 27 congressional districts, all 40 state Senate districts, and 118 of 120 Florida House districts.
The two House districts where the measure failed, HD 110 and HD 111, were only narrow defeats. HD 110 came in with nearly 59 percent in favor and HD 111 showed about 58 percent supporting the measure.
“The breadth and consistency of these numbers across disparate and diverse parts of the state truly shows the mandate voters gave this law,” said Sean Phillippi of TLE Analytics. “Amendment 2’s was not a regional or even metropolitan victory. Florida voters writ large said ‘yes’ to medical marijuana.”
Medical marijuana also outperformed President-elect Donald Trump across the state, even in counties that are traditionally Republican strongholds – in Collier County, 62 percent of voters backed Trump, while 64 percent backed Amendment 2.
The report also highlighted the vote totals in the home districts of some of the amendment’s biggest critics.
Mel Sembler, the founder of Drug-Free Florida, is registered to vote in HD 68, SD 19 and CD 13, each of which featured a top-10 margin of victory for Amendment 2. In CD 23, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s district, voters approved the measure by a 3-to-1 margin.
Florida for Care Legislative Director Dan Rogers said the numbers are “proof positive that voters delivered a clear mandate for medical marijuana in this election.”
“Legislators of both parties are going to be surprised by how high the support in their own districts actually was,” he said. “This was truly a broad expression of the people’s will and can’t be spun as anything but.”
